Vaccines can be delivered through the skin using ultrasound. This method doesn’t damage the skin and eliminates the need for painful needles. To create a needle-free vaccine, Darcy Dunn-Lawless at the University of Oxford and his colleagues mixed vaccine molecules with tiny, cup-shaped proteins. They then applied liquid mixture to the skin of mice and exposed it to ultrasound – like that used for sonograms – for about a minute and a half.
… genuinely I’ve never been offered (even had to google EMLA)
But now that you mention it, I’ve never had this particular issue from novicaine at the dentist. And they always use a topical.
Next time I need a shot/blood, I’ll see if they’re willing to try that! Since it really does seem to be about the poke itself, something that changes the feeling might be exactly what works.
Just source it yourself, it’s over the counter in the UK and unlikely to be difficult elsewhere. Apply thirty mins beforehand with the patch over, make sure you put it where the injection will go of course… remove when ready, wipe the cream away and voila, no feeling. The dentist uses a spray anaesthetic before needles; despite my phobia, I don’t really mind gum injections, very weird.