Flu shots (aka name that body part)

Yesterday my work kindly gave us all the opportunity to be voluntarily stabbed by long surgical devices that surged forth a cloudy liquid into our bodies…..yes it was flu shot time. Excuse me, I just need a moment…reliving that has made me slighty woozy…I think i’m going to pass out, no wait…vomit…no…hang on…okay, yup I’m good now.

To paint a picture of my life prior to Dreaded Flu Shot. I’m a red head, thus I’m ever so ghostly (okay, scary) pale to the point that on my drivers licence, my face actually becomes part of the white backdrop leaving only floating green eyes and a glossed up mouth. I’m like a female white Blockhead ala “Gumby”. My pale skin also has a habit of leaving reminders of previous injuries long after they have healed. I have a red spot on my knee from a rubber tyre fight at Wet and Wild last September (thanks Ali and Hannah!) and a weird red welt on my thumb from a church stage packup mishap in which an oversize picture frame fell from the skies and decided to embed itself a good centimetre into my hand.

I was slightly apprehensive about this flu shot, not because of the needle (I’m a pro at those, 4 operations before aged 13 makes is pretty passe after a while) but because of the annoying discoloured red dot that would be tattooed on my upper arm for the next 18 months. So I’m sitting with the doctor in one of the meeting rooms at work, sleeved rolled up ready for jabbing when he says “No, turn around”.

“I’m sorry what?!?! Where are you planning to stick that thing!!!!” Apparantely, I’m about to get jabbed in the hip. The hip! Do you KNOW how much that kills? Just to make matters worse, I get all tensed up in preparation for said forth jabbing causing him to really have to ram it in there. Now I have a bruise and a red dot on my right hip which I can’t even disguise as a freckle. It’s as plain as the nose on your face (at least for everyone else, but not according to my drivers licence apparantely).

So these past few days, I’ve been conducting a survey amongst fellow flu jabbees as to the ratio of hip to arm recievers. The current result…..Arm – twelve….Hip – ONE! I’m seriously trying to give the doctor the benefit of doubt. I’m wondering if the poor man wanted to be a doctor SO badly that he bought his degree from some internet college in Slovenia and simply accidently translated arm to mean hip. Maybe there are some places in the world where hip and arm are the same word. There’s no word for ‘foot’ in Japanese, perhaps Slovenia has the same linguistical difficulties when it comes to body parts? Maybe they just have ‘head’, ‘body’ and ‘funny bone’.

At least if there’s no word for ‘nose’ I wouldn’t have to explain why my licence doesn’t have one….