morning procedure

this morning i did the FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) injection at home, by myself. well, mostly by myself. i ended up making the hubby come and help. i wasn't nervous about the stabbing part; having done that once yesterday i knew it wasn't bad. but the procedure of mixing and preparing the syringe is fairly complicated, and i was a little anxious about doing it all correctly. as it turned out, i did need a little husband moral support, and it took me a lot longer than i'd planned. but i documented the steps for your information and for my own guidance and reminders, so i think after today i'll be an expert.



this is all of the stuff that you need for the injection. it all comes together in a little package, except for the alcohol swab and gauze. and the needle in the bigger plastic case is a special one that the nurse gave me a bunch of because they're easier to use and dispose of than the ones that come in the prescription pack.



ok, so first you have to put on the big, fat needle to mix the solution. the drug comes in a powder form (you can see the white powder at the bottom of the vial) and the syringe is filled with water. you attach everything as so, and then inject the water into the vial and mix it carefully with the powder. it dissolves really quickly and easily. you can't shake it because that makes it bubbly, so you just twist it back a forth a little bit to help it mix completely.



you can see here how the drug turned into a clear liquid in the vial. the next step is using the same big, fat needle that injected the water in to remove the medicine from the vial and store it in the syringe. this was the part that i had a lot of trouble with. i tried it a bunch of times but some of the liquid was always left in the bottom of the vial. one time i pulled the stopper right off the top of the syringe trying to pull it back far enough to suck all the liquid in. i just couldn't figure out how to do it. i tried at least three or four times at different speeds and angles. i'm pretty sure that yesterday the nurse did at least part of this by holding the vial upside down, but that didn't work at all. (and given what i know about gravity i don't see how it worked yesterday, either, so i must be mis-remembering.) this is when i enlisted the help of the hubby, who pretty much just stood there sleepily while i experimented. but i felt better talking through it with him, and eventually when i held the needle at a severe angle, like totally diagonal in the vial, it worked. hopefully this method will work again tomorrow.



once the solution is in the syringe, you remove the big, fat needle and put on the one that you're going to use for the actual injection. like i said before, the nurse gave me a bunch of these special ones that are pretty easy and safe to use. before you do the injection, you have to make sure that there are no air bubbles in the syringe. you can tap them out, but as an extra safety measure you are supposed to squirt a tiny bit out of the syringe, like i did in this photo, so that when you put it into your body you know that liquid is going to come out and not air.



and then you give yourself the shot! this is what the needle looks like... it's not so bad. it's almost as thin as an acupuncture needle, so you feel it, but it doesn't hurt. injecting the solution feels a little weird, like someone's contracting your muscle. like yesterday, i'm still a little sore. i did it in the opposite leg today, and will probably switch again tomorrow. but, all in all, it's not so bad. a tiny inconvenience for a greater cause.