Rabies Kisses
by Sue Stigleman • Asheville, NC

My son Ghilman and his friend Joe swung on the hammock hung between two trees in Joe’s back yard. Together they pushed backwards with their sneakered feet, and then leaned back and lifted their legs to swing forward again. My son saw the raccoon come from behind the tree out of the corner of his eye. It grabbed his ankle, holding on with its paws. Ghilman kicked his foot to shake the raccoon off. The raccoon came free, leaving a scratch across the front of his ankle. It looks like a pencil mark, Joe’s mom, a nurse, said. She was terrified, but trying hard not to show it in front of the boys.

On one hand, rabies is fatal once it develops. On the other hand, it was a scratch, not a bite. Ghilman is very observant and very accurate, almost always correct, but he was screaming and kicking his foot while he was looking at the raccoon. Can I trust what he says? The raccoon got away and couldn’t be tested. Is it fair to make him go through the shots if the chances are low? What might the side effects be? How would he cope with the shots? He’d said a few times that he wanted to die before he turned 11 and needed the next round of immunizations.

Ghilman kept asking questions. Where would he get the shots? Would they really hurt? Was it a big needle? I kept saying I didn’t know and he’d reply, "But Mom, what do you think?" Finally we had the answer– yes, he needed the shots, two of them, given at the ER Fast Track, which didn’t open until 3pm.

At one point, Ghilman burrowed his head into the couch. Saying "I’m not going and that’s final!" I sat next to him and tried to rub his back, but he jerked away from me. I asked if there was anything I could do to help, and he said "No!" I sat quietly beside him for a minute and then got up and moved around the room, keeping busy. I resisted the impulse to disagree with him, argue with him, say anything else to convince him. I’d already explained why, several times, as he asked over and over. This was something different. Ultimately, he wasn’t going to be able to say no to the shots, but he could have this time by himself of saying no. After about five minutes, he got up, tears still in his eyes, and started joking about going to the hospital.

It wasn’t all serious. Ghilman and I played rabies kisses, making spitting noises, laughing and chasing each other for kisses.

On the way to the hospital, I told him about my getting a shot in my rear end at age seven, after my mother had been diagnosed with hepatitis B. We talked about me having to pull down my pants, even though I was humiliated and ashamed to do this in front of my father.

And I told him the most important thing I could think of: "I don’t know what they’ll tell you at the hospital, but I want you to know that you can scream or cry or whatever helps you when you get the shots."

At every step I assured him that he wouldn’t get the shots without knowing when they were coming. I was going to stand firm on that, throwing my body over his or holding up my hand in the face of an approaching needle if I had to. (In fact, the hospital employees made eye contact with him, talked to him, and waited for him to be ready.)

He screamed when he got the shots. Nurse Mary told him he could scream or cry or whatever helped but just not move as he was getting the shots. He and I held each other tight, someone else held his legs, and the nurse gave him the shots. Right into my ear, he told me afterwards. He was looking at my ear as he screamed into it.

In the days before the fifth and last shot, he began saying again that he didn’t want to get the shot. When I asked why, he said, "I’ll miss Nurse Hansen." He marched through the waiting room that day to the chant of "I’m not getting the shot. Absolutely positively not." Then he made a fake grab at the door handle, looked at me and laughed. In Examining Room #3, he hopped up on the table, kicked off his shoes, and took his shirt off.

I was an army brat. Obedient. Followed orders. Stood in line. Got shots (lots of them.) Didn’t cry, whine, or complain. Didn’t call attention to myself. Continued quietly from the shots into the routine of the day. The only place where there was ever a treat afterwards was the treasure box in the dentist’s office. I took Ghilman to the store both before and after the shots. He got four transforming figures in a set he’s collecting, which worked out to one for each shot. A fair price, I thought.

He was supposed to get sick from the shots– a flu-like sickness lasting 24-48 hours. I didn’t wait for it to happen. I signed him out of school, packed the car, and took us both to stay with his grandmother to rest and play. He rested and played. I got sick. The cold I’d fought back the previous week came sliding back through the cracks in my worried and restless sleep.

As I write this, I remember reading about a Native American tribe in which children make all decisions that affect them, including things like whether to go to the dentist. Perhaps this decision hadn’t really been mine, after all.

Sue Stigleman works as a medical librarian. She’s in a Hakomi Therapy training program, and most important, she's Mom to her 8 year old son. Email her at: tangosue@earthlink.net