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According to the literature, 10 percent of all Americans are afflicted with the mental disorder known as trypanophobia. I am myself.

Simply stated, our heart rates leap and our blood pressures dive whenever we see a hypodermic needle coming our way. Even watching it happen to another person can cause us to faint.

The American Red Cross has no use for us. Some of us delay essential diagnostic tests and vaccinations at great risk to ourselves and others.

A few defy mortality and avoid doctors and dentists altogether. We are irrational and pathetic and not likely to change. Please indulge a particular case in point.

Mine dates back to the pre-tonsillectomy days of boyhood during which I frequently developed ear and throat infections. Penicillin was the miracle cure for such things in those days, and the doctor always kept it in plentiful supply.

I remember those injections being very painful and my skinny little arms made them ever more so. An allergic reaction eventually spared me of their misery, but the psychological damage was already done.
Enter now the childhood dentist.

I am also a member of that unfortunate minority of the population whose teeth decay easily in spite of all preventive care. Cavities soon formed in the early permanent teeth. Along with them came the hypodermic needle — entering my mouth!

The doctor was even insensitive in the storage of his needles — suspended in a transparent container filled with alcohol within plain view of his patients. The psychological damage became irreversible, I believe, in that creepy old office.

I eventually aged out of the protective care of good parents and, as many uninsured, invincible young adults do, ran the engine without ever changing the oil, so to speak. Consciously, I thought I was savings tons of money. Subconsciously, I was running from the needle, never quite able to hide from it.

When our daughter was a toddler she developed a terrible habit of bumping her head on the corners of furniture. Thrice she required stitches.

On the first visit to the emergency room, the doctor took a look at me halfway through the procedure and suggested that I leave the room. It was spinning wildly, and I made a hasty departure.

The second time, my wife suggested that I remain in the waiting room. I had already done my part with first aid and transportation and happily complied.

The third time, I watched the entire procedure with great interest as strands of her own hair were tied together and glued to seal the wound. The gore never bothered me, just the needle.

For 12 years I worked as a ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway and regularly applied advanced first aid skills. I saw it all, mostly the result of motor vehicle accidents. Terrible burns. Compound fractures. Eviscerations.

 Decapitations. Severe contusions. Hideous lacerations.

But none of that horror ever really unsettled me until the paramedics arrived and started poking around with IV needles. That was always my cue to begin interviewing witnesses and measuring skid marks.

Necessity eventually forced me back to the dental chair. The doctor found a cavity and, without any prior warning, attempted to sneak a very large hypodermic needle into my mouth. I instantly fainted.

This little stunt apparently caused great alarm in the office. Aroused with the assistance of smelling salts, I discovered the entire staff hovering over me like I had just returned from a code blue.

Quite embarrassed, I explained my condition.

Then doc made a radical suggestion — take the drill cold turkey. We both proceeded cautiously and successfully.

Every dentist thereafter marveled over my apparent ability to mentally block the pain of a drill. I have several fillings and, yes, two crowns on record to prove it. (In reality, they hurt like the devil.)

I turned the corner on this phobia in 1995.

Our church sponsored a blood drive one Saturday and I decided it was time to support the cause and man-up to the challenge. I gave a pint of blood without incident and still proudly carry the donor card in my wallet.

 Subsequent donations? No way. I had made the terrible mistake of sneaking a peek  at the procedure.
About 10 years ago — at the suggestion of a friend — I signed on with a new dentist in Greensboro. I explained my condition on the first visit. In silence, my hygienist bored a fine hole through me with a skeptical stare and probably made several quirky notations in my chart that day.

A tooth was due a crown on a subsequent visit. The doctor was convinced I had been suffering unnecessarily and offered a promise: I would neither see nor feel the needle. I relented and am happy to report that she is free to numb me anytime she deems it necessary. (But I still have to remind her not to put Vaseline on my lips; I’m not a baby.)

Just when I thought I had conquered trypanophobia, along came the swine flu pandemic.

One can hardly watch the news more than a few minutes these days without being ambushed by a needle.

 Bam. It usually happens faster than I can change the channel.

Of all the luck, the very day I sat down to write this column, this newspaper even ran a front-page photo of a poor UNCG student getting nailed with an H1N1 vaccination!

I feel myself slipping, folks. This is not good. (Sound of dead weight striking floor.)

Upon recovery: “It’s a sick alternative, but I suppose I could take the vaccine up the nose.”

Tim Pegram writes books, articles and this column from his home in Oak Ridge. Contact him at  timpegram@aol.com