Wedding Woes
mrsconn23
member
My meds vs. roommate's needle phobia.
in Wedding Woes
Dear Prudence,
I recently moved in with a roommate I met through mutual friends. We attend different graduate programs at the same university. Things have generally been fine. I have a chronic autoimmune disease that requires me to inject myself with medication every two weeks. My roommate has a severe needle phobia. This isn’t usually a problem because I get up around 5:30 a.m. every day, and I’ll take my medication out of the fridge and do my injection before my roommate is awake. I usually do this in the kitchen, as that’s where we keep the first aid supplies and sharps container. The other day my roommate came out of her room while I was injecting my medication. I was surprised and didn’t say anything before she saw the needle. I figured she would turn around and go back in her room until I was done, but instead she yelled, “Oh, my God!” and ran to the toilet, holding her hands over her mouth. She is now angry at me and says that I should never have had the needle out anywhere except for my room, regardless of whether she was awake or in the house at all. I do have sympathy for those who have a needle phobia—it took me a while to get used to injecting myself. But this is something that I have to do to stay alive! I’m going to do it in my room from now on, but I’m hurt that my roommate would react with so much disgust to something that barely impacts her and affects my life quite a lot. Am I justified in thinking that this is an overreaction? Should I bring this up with her at all?
—Roommate’s Needle Phobia
I recently moved in with a roommate I met through mutual friends. We attend different graduate programs at the same university. Things have generally been fine. I have a chronic autoimmune disease that requires me to inject myself with medication every two weeks. My roommate has a severe needle phobia. This isn’t usually a problem because I get up around 5:30 a.m. every day, and I’ll take my medication out of the fridge and do my injection before my roommate is awake. I usually do this in the kitchen, as that’s where we keep the first aid supplies and sharps container. The other day my roommate came out of her room while I was injecting my medication. I was surprised and didn’t say anything before she saw the needle. I figured she would turn around and go back in her room until I was done, but instead she yelled, “Oh, my God!” and ran to the toilet, holding her hands over her mouth. She is now angry at me and says that I should never have had the needle out anywhere except for my room, regardless of whether she was awake or in the house at all. I do have sympathy for those who have a needle phobia—it took me a while to get used to injecting myself. But this is something that I have to do to stay alive! I’m going to do it in my room from now on, but I’m hurt that my roommate would react with so much disgust to something that barely impacts her and affects my life quite a lot. Am I justified in thinking that this is an overreaction? Should I bring this up with her at all?
—Roommate’s Needle Phobia
Re: My meds vs. roommate's needle phobia.
What I think the LW needs to do is identify what she's doing. The roommate has asked for that accommodation which appears to be something doable for the LW.
If this is not a manageable work-around then LW needs to say so. However LW needs to have a bit more sympathy for her roommate.
An ex I dated was diabetic so often had to do things with sharp objects - checking blood sugars, etc - but he did like LW did, and would not do it around me.
I feel like LW should have advised that medication needed to be taken at a certain time and needs to be in a safe area, as well as to be refrigerated. Hopefully with knowledge, LW's roomie would be respectful and understand and avoid the kitchen at those times to reduce issue.
Roommate: "Can you do that in your room so I don't risk running into it? As you can see, it's a phobia to the point where I vomit."
LW: "Theoretically, sure. But since the meds and sharps container is in the kitchen, it really makes more sense to do it there. It's 10 minutes every two weeks, and I'll get up early in the morning, so maybe it makes sense for me just to help you avoid that time frame. Want me just to text you the night before I need to do my injections and then again when the coast is clear?"
Huh. A calm discussion.
The appropriate response, for everyone, is to have had a calm and non-blaming discussion about how to avoid the roommate seeing a needle in the future. It's one shot every two weeks. Shouldn't be that big of a deal. Whether it's the LW just taking that shot in their room. Or having planned day/times when they take the shot in the kitchen.
As a Type I diabetic myself, I take at least 4 shots/day. I know needles creep a lot of people out, though I think it's often more seeing the shot itself than just the needle. Including my H, lol. And I do try to be sensitive to that. But I can attest that people can also be unbelievable jerks about it.
There have been times...especially back in the old days of insulin, only coming in glass vials...where I've needed to take a shot in public or in the main area of a bathroom, as opposed to a stall. I'm discrete. I try to have my hip where I'm going to do that shot facing a wall, so people won't really see it. But on rare occasions, I've had people "scold" me about it and tell me I "need to use a stall". People who didn't even see the shot itself. Just the 20 seconds I'm pulling insulin into the syringe. People who have never ACTUALLY tried to balance pulling liquid from a vial with a syringe. Injecting oneself. And doing it all while having no counter to set anything down on. Plus it is so thoughtless. My shortened life is already hard AF and I don't need it harder with some rando's ignorant opinion on how I should manage my medication.
To end on a funnier story. When I was in college, one of my sorority sister's for some reason was super interested in seeing me give myself a shot. She said she was curious and had always been squeamish about needles, so she was hoping that watching me would help her get over a little of that squeamishness. So the next time she happened to be around when I needed to take a shot, I told her. Then, right before the syringe was about to penetrate my skin, she turns her head and says something like, "No! No I can't, I can't watch." I was not offended in the slightest. We both laughed.
Also everyone I know who has needle phobia is afraid of getting needles stuck IN THEM, but don't have an issue with other people using needles on themselves and/or just need to look away if they don't want to see the actual injection. If the roommate has this severe of a phobia where they run away to vomit because they accidentally saw someone injecting themselves, I'm not sure why they agreed to LW as a roommate. Furthermore, I have questions about this persons consumption of visual media...what if they're flipping a channel and come across a movie with intravenous drug use or an episode of Intervention? Are they similarly traumatized?
When I've had roommates, in the beginning I will explain the basics of my condition including, jic, info about low blood sugar. She made a typical comment when the subject comes up of "Wow, I could never give myself shots, I'm terrified of needles." And, although I don't think she was even thinking about this issue. I took that as a cue to assure her that I wouldn't have a reason to take my shots in our communal area, so she'd probably never see it.
My H, on the other hand, is not so lucky, lol. I keep my actively being used insulin on our coffee table and usually give myself shots while I'm sitting on the couch. His "normal" living room spot...at a chair at his desktop...can only partially see the couch, so he rarely sees me giving myself a shot. But if he is where he can see me, I'll do the shot on the hip that is opposite of him because even after all this time, he still can't watch the shot without it freaking him out, lol.
I'd never do it on purpose, but I do sometimes tease him that I've given myself over 20K shots while he's in the same room over the time we've been together, so it's funny it still freaks him out. It's funny to him also and he'll say something like, " I know! I know! I don't know why, but it does. And please don't ever break your arm! I would find a way to give you your shots if I had to. But I really, REALLY don't want to." LMAO.
And I hope I worded this right. "Exposed" is a weird word to use in this case, and it isn't like people mean to spring the thing that people are scared of on them out of spite. A lot of people don't know what I'm scared of and it comes out of left field.
I even reread the letter and it doesn't sound like the anger was quick and just in a startled moment. Because "in the moment", the roommate freaked and was running to the bathroom. The LW has two sentences of what the roommate said to them. It was probably said right after the incident, but after the roommate came back from the bathroom and was no longer in the initial panic.
Plus, even if the roommate had lashed out in anger they didn't mean, they also didn't apologize for it or I assume the LW would have mentioned it.
Both apologize and make a plan to deal with this. I don't think it's fair to tell meds roommate that they have to do this only in their room, but a planned time and a "finished" text would go a long way towards alleviating both sides here.