A Shot a Day Makes the Doctor Say Yay

Not very many twelve-year-old girls have to give themselves shots every day, but really it’s not bad at all.

Sometimes Turner syndrome messes with your heart. (It messed with mine pretty good.) Sometimes Turner syndrome messes with your thyroid or your kidneys. (Mine? So far, so good.) But there are two things that Turner syndrome always does:

1. Turner syndrome means you can’t have babies of your own. Nonny’s taking care of that one for our family, and I don’t even need to think about that right now anyway. Right?
2. Turner syndrome means you don’t grow to a normal height. Not on your own, anyway. But there’s special medicine called growth hormone and if you give yourself a shot of that stuff every day for a while, you can do a pretty fine job with the whole growing thing. I’m already over five feet tall. Without the shots I’d barely pass four.

I’m pretty lucky, actually. Since my doctors figured out about my Turner syndrome stuff soon after I was born, that meant I got to start shots early and do plenty of growing. Sometimes girls with Turner syndrome don’t find out until it’s too late for the shots.

The needles don’t scare me. They’re small. My bedtime supplies aren’t that different from everyone else’s. Toothbrush, pajamas, needle. Check, check, check.

Mom used to give me the shots. Then I told her I wanted to learn how to do it on my own, and after she taught me, I did it in one try.

In one shot. Ha-ha.

Easy as brushing your teeth.

(Okay, sometimes Mom still helps with my shots if I’m doing the shot in a place I can’t reach, like my shoulder or my gluteus maximus, which is a noun meaning: butt.)

My big, tough, blowtorch wielding brother-in-law, Thomas, can work with flames and dangerous buzzing tools inches from his face no problem, but needles? Total heebie-jeebies. It still makes me laugh when I think about his face the first time he saw me do my shots.

The thing is, though, shots don’t make me feel brave because they’re not even scary. It’s only medicine. A little pinch. Done.

For other people, maybe shots are scary. Thomas once told me if he’s around needles it’s hard for him to be brave. But then, he doesn’t need to be brave about talking to new people and making friends. Even at a really hard job, the annoying people he works with end up his friends, and grumpy old bosses turn out to like him a lot. I remember once when he visited and we went out as a family he talked to the waiter at our table and the ticket taker at the movie theater like they’d known each other all their lives. Like they’re best friends. I don’t know how he does that.

Nonny says when he asked her out for the first time, he wasn’t shy or awkward at all. If a boy ever asked me on a date (when I’m forty-two, like Dad says) I would definitely need to be brave. Even lab partners give me butterflies.

It’s not that I’m shy. I’m really not. I get A’s on all my class presentations, and I think doing high school drama will be really fun. Talking to people isn’t the hard part. It’s that I can never tell what people think is the wrong thing to say until after I’ve said it.

Like asking Ms. Trepky about homework that isn’t due for more than six months.

Or telling a teacher about my bestie, the library.

Me trying to figure out who to talk to at a birthday party?

I’d rather stick a needle in my butt.