Dear Medical Science,
Please explain why receiving a hypodermic injection rates lower on the pain scale than removing the Band-Aid placed after the injection. I admit it’s not a big difference – the needle is a flat zero, while the Band-Aid pulls a one or maybe up to a 2 in some cases – but it’s measurable.
In the interest of full disclosure I should probably reveal that I once required general anesthesia to remove a Band-Aid as a child. Okay, technically I was receiving general anesthesia for unrelated and more traditional medical reasons, and my parents just asked the doctors to remove the Band-Aid at the time, but the fact remains I refused all efforts to remove it until I was unconscious and fully sedated.
Medicine has seen many important advances in my lifetime, and I have every confidence that you can make peeling off a bit of adhesive hurt no more than piercing one’s skin with a steel needle.
Please look into this.
Sincerely,
Not Going to Get the Flu This Year
P.S. It is not permissible to solve this problem by making the injection hurt more. Make the Band-Aid hurt less.
P.P.S. For all practical intents and purposes I got the flu anyway. Sure, I didn’t have the classic sinus problems or chills, but I was still exhausted and feverish all day. It’s a very strange sensation to feel your body fighting a perceived illness that has absolutely no outward effects. Come to think of it, this has all the benefits of staying in bed all day watching television with none of the disadvantages of sneezing and taking medication!
Obviously band-aids should come with a syrette of morphine. Or, perhaps, there could be someplace to go to remove band-aids under general anesthesia — like Urgent Care, but just for band-aids. Or maybe we could genetically modify ourselves to have teflon skin so the band-aid doesn’t stick. (OK, maybe that’s not such a good idea.)
There is a “gating” effect in pain. If two things hurt at once, you only feel the worst of them. Acupuncture builds on that. So to remove the band-aid, just twist your ankle at the same time. See, no pain! (Except for the ankle.)
I think you should be aware that my daughter adores band aids, and will completely cover her entire body with them whenever she has an opportunity. This means that my three year old has a higher pain tolerance…… just one more reason you are adorable.
In fairness to me, she probably has less hair on her arm. It’s pulling out hair that’s most bothersome, I wager.
Richard Feynman told a story in one of his books about giving science demonstrations as a kid, which he finished by secretly dunking his hand in a bucket of water, then a bucket of alcohol, and then “accidentally” brushing it across an open flame, feigning terror as his hand caught fire. When he tried to demonstrate this in college, he discovered that hair on the back of his hand acted as a wick for the flame, and caused rather a lot of pain.
After he had burned off the hair, the band-aids he wore while healing came off easily. See, no pain! (Except for the 2nd degree burns.)