Joe Bennett: Needles? Hand me a blindfold, please

I said no thank you to the acupuncture option Photo / 123rf

Today's subject, as you have probably guessed, is trypanophobia.

For the last few months I have had a duff shoulder.
Sometimes I imagined that it had got a little better but then I'd go to don a shirt or grab a seat belt and the scream I emitted would be enough to startle the dog I no longer have.
So in the end I took the duff shoulder to the physio who did the usual physio things to it. She warmed it and salved it and rubbed and manipulated it and gave it radio waves to listen to and made no difference to it at all.

Would I, asked the physio, be interested in a little acupuncture?
No, I said, not because of any trypanophobia, but because I consider acupuncture to be similar to voodoo - you have to believe that sticking needles into something will make a difference for it to make a difference, and I do not believe.

Fair enough, said the physio though I do not believe she meant it.

I took the shoulder next to the ultrasoundist, who smeared it with pregnancy jelly and then waved a wand over it.
And lo, on the screen in front of us appeared an image of my soft tissues. I beheld a series of grey and grainy ghosts of which I could make no sense.
The ultrasoundist beheld tendons and muscles and a case of capsulitis.

Capsulitis? I said.

Often known as frozen shoulder, she said. It is an inflammation of the shoulder capsule.

There are it seems two forms of treatment for capsulitis. One is that staple of medicine ancient and modern, the passage of time.
Leave capsulitis alone for a couple of years and it will probably get bored and go away. The other is an injection of cortico-steroids directly into the shoulder joint.

I'll have the injection, please, I said. But I spoke with reservations and without enthusiasm.

Cortico-steroids sound nasty. They bring to mind Olympic drug cheats with improbable biceps and shrivelled genitals. At the same time my Olympic ambitions are not what they were, and I doubt I'd notice any shrivelling.

But then there is the injection itself. I am not an especially squeamish man. I once assisted at an emergency operation on a Jack Russell terrier and I did fine through the scalpelling and the opening up and all the rest.

I will admit, however, that when the vet took the still-attached and pulsing stomach in his hand and palpated it for obstructions, I asked if I could nip outside for a little fresh air.

As a young PE teacher I saw some fine accidents. Two spectacularly broken bones come to mind, with people turning pale on all sides, and also a displaced patella.
The boy fell to the ground during a game of touch rugby and screamed. I peeled his hands from his knee and there was a depression where his kneecap should have been.
The kneecap was now on the side of his leg. Another boy had come across to look. He passed out as if shot.

I went to put a hand lightly on the kneecap but even as I did so it popped back into place of its own volition. Within a minute the lad wanted to carry on playing touch.

So no, I am not squeamish or a trypanophobe. But neither am I a trypanophile. I trotted along willingly enough to my Covid injections but I chose not to watch the needle going in. It seems a reasonable aversion. An injection is effectively a stabbing or a snake bite. Instinct recoils from either.

But a vaccination is into soft tissue. This jab is into the joint itself, the shoulder capsule, and I have a mental image from the word capsule that suggests the needle is going to meet ample resistance on the way in.

This would appear to be confirmed by the requirement that I bring someone with me to drive home afterwards. The arm, presumably, will be dangling useless at my side, like a rabbit in a butcher's window.

Furthermore the thing is being done under ultrasound so the doctor jabbing can steer the genital-shriveller exactly where it's needed.

Which means that on the screen in front of me I'll see the metal needle as a huge white rod plunging deep into my grey and grainy ghosts and, well, I think I may take a blindfold with me.