emla is something I only heard about fairly recently, but I so wish I knew about it when I was going through chemo and having to have lots of needles. emla is a cream that is a local anaesthetic that has been successfully used in UK for 25 years. The cream is available in a ‘all-in-one’ pack from your local pharmacy to help numb the pain of the needle during child vaccinations, minor skin procedures, blood donation and travel vaccinations, and in my case: chemo. Luckily, we never had a problem taking our little one for his injections. He just tended to sit there and watch while the nurse jabbed him. In fact, it was only his 8 week injections that he cried for. He’s hard, obviously, and much braver than me! While I’ve always been OK with having blood tests done, having a needle in your forearm for chemo is totally different, and towards the end of my treatments, it became quite painful. It’s not that I’m scared of needles, it’s just that the pain wasn’t very … [Read more...]