The closer the blade gets to your heart, the more you must not back away.
The faster the crow’s beak flies toward your eyes, the more you must not flinch.
The hotter and more intolerable the flames, the more resolute you must stand.
You are not being harmed.
You are being healed.
Rhyd Wildermuth 
Not just the crow’s beak–the retinologist’s needles. (Usually.)
The eye with more IOP got a cold laser treatment. I think they used some device with tiny needles instead of one that shots puffs of air beforehand. Felt odd.
This poem comes through loud and clear for me.
PSVL talks about needles in relation to this poem.
I hates me the needles, but when pregnant, being told I was diabetic (at 10 weeks, yet) and would have to stab my tender fingertips 4x a day to test my glucose level, I thought that was bad. Then at 5 months, I had to start with insulin, and inject myself twice daily, subQ. Luckily, I was able to find places along the insides of my thighs that seemed to have no pain/sensation receptors near the surface. If I went in at a very shallow angle, I wouldn’t feel much, but I had to LOOK at it.
This was for my health, and thus the health of my son. If I rebelled, there were two lives in danger, and I had promised an unnamed Goddess the last time I was pregnant that if I ever wanted to carry a fetus to delivery & health, I would do anything required…boy, was I ever called on that, in more ways than this.
I don’t fear the needles anymore, but I worry about the skill of the person injecting me, and I still dislike it. When I’m giving blood, I can help heal another. When I’m getting an injection or giving up vials of blood for the uniformed vampires, It’s for my health.
Standing firm in the face of what you fear is damned hard, even if you *know* it’s to heal you.
As a 30+ year insulin-dependent diabetic, I know deeply of what you speak. (Which is why I’ve had to see the retinologist, alas…)
In college, there was a very tall very nearsighted Jewish man (he lived in the Hebrew section, I lived in the French, in a language dorm) who twice had a detached retina. He went to a hospital back east–can’t remember if it was in NYC or Boston. I have a friend now who reminds me of him, especially the very curly fly-away hair and the sense of humor–Russell Williams, of whom you might have heard in Pagan circles–also 6’6″, very nearsighted. Can’t recall if he’s had detached retinas, but the clarity of his field of vision is compromised. He needs a very orderly milieu so that he knows where things are, and they don’t trip him up.
What is it with tall white guys (as a genderless group name) that they have these particular problems with their eyes?
A fair question…luckily, my retinas have not yet detached, though they kind of threatened to for a while…but the other problems in them have been bad enough. Who knows? There are these weird patterns I have noticed as well, e.g. if one’s first or middle given name is Phil(l)ip, one is likely to be involved in druidry in some fashion, etc. Bizarre. 😉