Chronic Illness and Pain: When Pain Becomes Ordinary

WHEN PAIN BECOMES ORDINARY

By Ayoposi Ojelabi · Published: 18 August 2026

4 min read

There was a time, growing up, when it took several people to hold me down just to give me an injection or insert a cannula for a drip.

It was never because my veins were difficult to find. They weren’t. It was because I dreaded needles. Like many children, I believed that if I struggled hard enough, perhaps the injection wouldn’t happen.

Looking back now, I sometimes wonder what that frightened little boy would think if he could see me today.

Because somewhere along the way, I stopped being afraid. Not because I became brave.

Because illness changed the rules.

The condition that eventually made hospitals feel less like places of emergency and more like a second home also transformed my relationship with needles. I lost count of how many blood tests, cannulas, and infusions followed. At first, drawing blood was straightforward. It hurt, but it was quick. Somewhere along the way, though, my veins became increasingly difficult to access, and they have stayed that way ever since.

My time in intensive care was measured as much by needle pricks as by calendar days.

Every morning began with blood tests. Every treatment seemed to start with someone searching for a vein. On infusion days, what should have been a simple procedure often became an exercise in patience. One attempt became two. Two became four. Sometimes the doctors brought in an ultrasound machine to search for veins hidden beneath the surface, and even then there were no guarantees.

There were occasions when two clinicians worked at the same time, one on each arm, each trying to find a usable vein before the other succeeded. It sounds almost unbelievable when I think back on it, but almost every treatment I received depended on gaining intravenous access. Finding a vein was never just another procedure. It was the gateway to everything that followed.

When my arms offered no options, they moved to my wrists instead. They usually numbed the area first, though the anaesthetic never completely removed the discomfort. The pain was different there, deeper and sharper than the familiar sting in my arm. And when even my wrists proved impossible, they sometimes searched for veins in my feet instead. By then, finding a usable vein had become less a routine procedure than a daily exercise in persistence.

I cannot tell you exactly when the fear disappeared. I only know that one day I realised it had.

The needles still hurt. My veins were no easier to find.

But the anxiety had quietly left.

I even started telling the nurses they could take my early morning blood while I was still asleep because the pain had become so familiar that it no longer seemed worth waking up for.

Perhaps that is why I so often heard nurses and doctors reassuring one another.

“He’ll be fine.”

“He’s always calm with these things.”

They were right.

While they searched for a vein, I simply carried on with whatever I had been doing, watching television, reading, talking, or sometimes just lying there, letting them work. The procedure no longer interrupted my day. It had simply become part of it.

If I tried to estimate how many times a needle has entered my body, the number would sound exaggerated, even though it wouldn’t be. More than a year in hospital. Daily blood tests that often required two or three attempts before blood was successfully taken. Repeated cannulas. Countless infusions. Ultrasound-guided procedures. Blood gas samples. And even now, years later, IVIG every two weeks still begins with someone searching for a vein.

Then there were the daily blood gas tests.

Every morning, usually around six o’clock, someone would prick my earlobe to collect a sample while I was still asleep. Most mornings I barely woke. The procedure slipped into my dreams and disappeared again before I was fully conscious.

I often joke that after so many blood gas tests, I’m surprised I don’t have a piercing there by now.

Humour, I think, is another way the mind adapts.

I am still receiving IVIG every two weeks. There is no definite date on the calendar when the needles will stop. The small scars on my arms have become part of me now, so familiar that I rarely notice them anymore.

The strange thing isn’t that the needles became less painful.

The strange thing is that they stopped feeling extraordinary.

People often talk about building a high pain threshold.

I am not sure that is what happened.

I think something else happened instead.

When pain becomes part of ordinary life, the mind quietly files it under normal. Not because it hurts less, but because fear eventually becomes too exhausting to carry every single day.

That frightened little boy who once needed several people to hold him still would probably never believe any of this.

Neither would I.

But long illness changes many things.

Sometimes, it even changes your relationship with pain.

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WHEN PAIN BECOMES ORDINARY

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