2 jabs in 2 days!

I dislike needles - injections mainly. Needles for sewing, that I can tolerate.

But as the years passed by, I learnt to overcome my fear of needles. Mainly because I'm working in a medical field. Once in a while I need a jab or two or more. Gosh! I lost count how many times I got needles poked into my veins.

I got a bad experience with needles. It happened when I was doing my medical checkup to go overseas back in 2003. The phleobotomist was trying to withdrew blood sample from my right vein. She poked and kept on poking until I said, "awww.." then she looked at me guiltily and said, "it's hard to get blood from this vein. I need to try the other arm." And I was like, "what?" but didn't said it out loud. Considering that it needs to be done, I let her and after 2 attempts, she managed to drew some. That day, I can't work hard. Both of my arms were being poked!

Good thing being an underweight person (which I used to be! haha) is that m not eligible to donate blood hence less poking. So the only time I 'surrender' my arms to the phleobotomist were when I'm required for some tests - blood sugar, cholesterol, hepatitis B and recently thyroid.

Anyway, last Thursday, I was listed for the health promotion program. It's given to the civil servants of the Brunei government and I think I'm on phase 1 hence mainly it concentrated on Ministry of Health staffs only at the moment. Came to the Health Promotion Centre with my bff and I was no 6 on the que while my bff was no 7 - must be really her lucky number! Upon registration, blood was taken for sugar, cholesterol and cretanine. Another poke to my skinny arm. I tried to distract myself by looking around apart from my arm and put my whole trust on the phleobotomist to do the 'right' thing.

After blood, they checked the weight, height, waist and hip measurements and yea! m no longer underweight. I'm exactly on the border of underweight and normal! Gosh! My feelings? I'm happy that m not an underweight no more but at the same time, I was to lose weight, mainly on my tummy area...hmmmppp! My WHR - waist hip ratio - is also normal! Basically - without the blood results - m a healthy bunny ^_^

Late this afternoon, 20 minutes before work ends and the weekend start, the technicians from the vaccination centre came down and asked whether we want to vaccinated ourselves with the H1N1 vaccine. If you asked me 4 weeks ago, I would say no and my answer was still no last Thursday. But a memo came out from the Minister of Health to ask every frontliners who served the patient to get vaccinated with the vaccine. Gosh! What a hassle but job is a job. Hence this afternoon, I got myself vaccinated and so far, Alhamdullilah, I didn't experienced any side effects...not yet anyway and I hope not! But the pain is there on the injection site.

So, that's 2 poking in a week, another self-history in the making!