I’ve been going to animal shelters for a long time, and it’s still hard

In which Jill embraces the suck.

I’m terrified of needles. I always have been.

For my twelfth birthday, my mother took me to the jewelry department at The Broadway to have my ears pierced. A girl around my age, perched on a high stool, had just had her earlobes poked by a uniformed woman who held a needle in one hand and a cork in the other. I watched as a thin ribbon of blood wound down the girl’s neck.

I woke up to a uniformed woman administering smelling salts. My earlobes would remain unmolested for another 5 years.

I still panic. Every time I get a blood test, I bring a pillow I can scream into while I lay—yes, I need a table or a bed—with my arm exposed to a stranger. I have mastered keeping my arm still as my teeth chatter and the pillow muffles my cries until the last vial of blood is full. Then I’m obliged to sit around until I can assure everyone that I can stand without passing out. Sometimes a bemused phlebotomist offers me a lollipop.

Most of my friends have no trouble getting blood tests. They simply pop into the lab during their lunch break and offer up a naked arm, all the while chatting with the lab tech and, lickety-split, they’re off to the Coffee Bean for a chai.

“How do you DO it?” I asked a hardy friend undergoing weekly blood tests to check her counts. “I dunno,” she said. “It’s not fun. I just tell myself I’m taking care of my health, and I go back.”

Having to undergo chemotherapy a few years ago upped my anxiety ante. I was as concerned about the needles as I was the chemo itself. In my weaker moments, I considered forgoing the whole ordeal and taking my chances. Someone told me about a port that they install near your clavicle so the veins in your arms don’t collapse—they just hook you up to the port and let the juice flow in. In the end, I surrendered to needles in my arm for every treatment. My veins, nearly imperceptible to the naked eye, held up. Ironically, I’m a little less squeamish now than I used to be.

It sort of reminds me of going to the shelter to meet and video dogs. It’s hard because you know you can’t help every dog, and—because we gravitate to senior, behavior, and medical dogs—we know some of the dogs we get attached to might not make it out.

“How do you DO it?” people ask. Many simply cannot bear the sadness of being at an animal shelter, hearing the cries of those who might die there, seeing their desperation, mindful that these days we’re getting farther away from no-kill rather than closer.

“I don’t know,” I answer, recalling my friend’s words. “It’s not fun. I just keep thinking we’re helping dogs, and I go back.”