6.
“When I was about 10, I had to get blood work done for the first time that I could actually remember. But I had been hospitalized and gotten lots of IV shots in my life, and I was always in terrible pain for all of it. My veins have always been notoriously hard to find. I was very shaky and scared in the lab, and the nurse who was doing my blood draw tried to calm my nerves. She kept telling me to just close my eyes and relax, it wouldn’t hurt at all, I wouldn’t even feel it, she was that good. My grandpa told her that she had better be telling me the truth because if it did hurt, I would react. She said it was just my anxiety, and once I calmed down, I wouldn’t feel much. Well, I closed my eyes like she asked and tried to relax, but it still hurt like hell when she inserted the needle into my arm. I held completely still, but I started wailing and crying. I was screaming, ‘THAT DOES HURT! YOU LIAR THAT DOES HURT! HOW COULD YOU LIE TO ME LIKE THAT?!'”
“And kept on wailing and bawling. She finished the draw, but she kept begging me to stop crying and to relax, but I couldn’t stop. My grandpa had zero empathy for her and was like, ‘I tried to warn you, you lied to her, so now this is the consequence!’ Apparently, a bunch of other kids in the waiting room started to freak out, too. The front desk gave me an extra sticker because they felt so sorry for me, and the nurse who lied to me was so embarrassed she had to go home early because she couldn’t face anyone else in the office that afternoon.”
—Anonymous, 26, female, Virginia
