Ree Pashley
Our weapon is a Needle
A guide to giving emergency injections
The moment might erupt without fissures or symptomatic tremors: she is normal, he is happy, and then—crisis. Often, a potentially life-threatening crisis. One requiring an emergency injection.
It’s a measure you have practiced administering in a sterile, white room to an inanimate object. No urgency of time. No actual syringe-through-the-skin.
But this is no scenario, this is happening right now. In your kitchen. At a busy playground. In the middle of a parking lot.
Parents and caregivers, this is how to give your child an emergency injection:
1. Be terrified
Feel the fear grip your throat and tremble down your limbs. Chill the tips of your fingers.
It will hammer in your chest, Slamming! Slamming! Like a demolition in your diaphragm.
And then your mouth goes dry; as if you’ve sucked a lavender-scented laundry sheet.
For a moment, the reality that your baby could go limp, struggle to breathe and…
and….
will completely command every cell of your body, the synapses of your brain. But this is only a flicker, a blip that squeezes your senses and stills your universe. Although it feels like five frozen minutes – a dangerous stretch of time – it is not.
It is merely an intake of air, held too long. Let it out: force your pinched esophagus and rattled chest to automate again, and;
2. Breathe
Now, fear and doubt unite: become a force that fills your lungs as a panic-driven panting.
Doubt will tempt with little lies, alternative measures. Do not listen! You cannot drive in time; do not divert this to a doctor – this emergency may be determined by minutes.
Inhale, deep — deeper. Expand until your shoulders rise. And tell the doubt you’re competent. Many of us whisper, sometimes a breathy chant, but speak it in your exhale: You can.
Because you must.
Once more, to quench the secondary uncertainty, which rises near the ears or washes through the abdomen. Drink in the oxygen: feel it ripple along your airways, tickle down your nostrils. Squeeze your cold fingers to a fist. And as you exhale –
3. Remember what you learned
We injected teddy bears, pinching plushy fur. Others used oranges, practicing against the peels. While, not a human epidermis, something to press through with that sharp syringe.
Did you laminate a card, citing numbers 1-5? Or have a printed paper outlined with instructions?
I have three —no, four: an app, which plays on repeat once I’ve tapped the icon; the insert of his glucagon, and two other printed papers, because I like the extra.
Read the notes, see the steps, close your eyes and recall your training:
- the largest muscle; the meaty upper thigh;
- tap to release the iridescent air, those pretty dancing bubbles;
- prick straight down, no angles. And push through that orange-peel, plushy layer
Play it in your mind, without the screaming. Your baby doesn’t writhe or beg you not to hurt him. Your hands obey, the needle pricks and everything ends up okay.
Now, unclench your fist, force open your eyes and come back to the emergency. It’s time to;
4. Hold the syringe
5. Plunge it in
There is no pretty pose here: he may scream, you may cry.
Do it anyway.
6. Know you did everything within your ability
what I could
everything I knew
all that I was able
my best. I did my best
…will be spinning in your thoughts as you drive to the hospital or await the paramedics.
…swirling with all the other facts; like what she ate for breakfast and how he slept the night. His weight and dosage given. Let it whisper in the background as you charge through the emergency room with your child in your arms and demand a doctor – now!
…punctuating every ticking minute as you wait to hear the sirens, experience the rush of relief as those blessed blue angels sweep in and scurry her to beeping, IV-dripping safety.
…as you pass over her pink papers, recite his medical condition. A prayer in every exhale.
…when the world stops quaking; reduces to a rumble, and you can feel your mouth again.
And still, you’ll need to say it again. Write it in your thoughts, carve it in your breath: you did all that you were able.
7. Collapse
This comes later; hours, sometimes days, after. When the rhythm of your heart and the pace of your breath has returned. When the doctor has given discharge, or your little one is running through the kitchen, sliding in his socks across the tiled floor.
When you put your daughter to bed and touch her warm, pink cheeks.
When you whisper a prayer of thanks, send your gratitude up into the stars.
Then, you will cry, because now you can. You will let the fear run in rivets down your face, form perfect circles on your pillow.
You will shiver, head pounding, throat raw.
But it’s not only an ache: your shoulders finally settle, too. And the armor on your sternum, the weight within your lungs will lift like a dandelion wish. These tears will be both sweet and sad, because oh, you made it through!
And here is where I like to think of how so many of us grew up reading of knights with shiny swords, admiring those dragon-slayers. But in this life, our weapon is a needle and what we fight breathes fire, too.
So, when you’ve plowed through numbers 1-6, a week has passed, and now you are sitting in the center of those late-night sobs, collapsing in the dark, remember: you are brave. You may not hold a sword and shield, but darling, you are able.
Ree Pashley holds degrees in criminal justice and social work from Taylor University (Indiana). Her writing has been published by Herstry, Matador Network and University of California Press. She is also a mom to eight awesome kids, one who has a rare medical condition that, in the event of a crisis, requires two emergency injections.