On Friday morning, I cut my Lupron does in half down to 5 iu. The leprechauns have happily departed and my head feels back to normal. I did my first Follistim injection on Friday night. Follistim is a different setup than the Lupron. It involves a cartridge full of medicine that gets put inside a "pen" and injected through an attached needle. Little more complicated to administer. It also has to be refrigerated which can cause the medicine to hurt more going in if you don't follow the directions and let it get to room temperature first. What idiot wouldn't follow the directions though?! ::hangs head in shame::
Follistim comes in this super stylish case. I may accessorize my next outfit with it.
Pen with the medicine cartridge underneath and the needles at the bottom. Looks innocent enough, right? I mean how much hurt can something that looks like a Bic pen cause?
Close-up of the pen without the cap. And more importantly, without the needle.
So the needle gets attached and the medicine gets "dialed" up. That means I use the yellow turny dial on the top to dial up to 175 iu of the medicine. And then I stab inject myself.
I didn't exactly follow the whole let it get to room temp direction and it definitely hurt going in. And it also hurt after it went it. And it also caused quite a bit of blood when the needle came out. And it also brought about the nastiest bruise yet.
I didn't exactly follow the whole let it get to room temp direction and it definitely hurt going in. And it also hurt after it went it. And it also caused quite a bit of blood when the needle came out. And it also brought about the nastiest bruise yet.
I give you...the mother of all bruises.
I also had my first traveling with meds experience yesterday. My cousin and her boyfriend were having a party in Connecticut and Hubs and I took the two hour drive to go see them. Because I have to administer the Follistim at the same time every night, it had to come with us. I packed the Follistim purse in a cooler with ice packs, along with my baby sharps container and the dip I was bringing to the party.
Hello, thanks for having us. Here is the dip I made. Oh don't mind the needles. It's all part of the roller coaster.
(Side note: This dip was amaze-balls. Highly recommend you make it and then maybe just eat it with a spoon. Like now.)
This time, I set a reminder on my phone so I took the medicine out about fifteen minutes before I was ready to shoot myself up. This helped a lot with the pain. Snuck off to the bathroom with my cooler of drugs and needles and put my ove's to work.
I go in tomorrow morning for my first monitoring blood work appointment. Fingers crossed that everything looks good.
I leave you with a picture of Hubs in his new shirt.
Pretty much sums it up right there.
Enjoy your Sunday!
hanging head in shame....I didn't see where it says to let it get to room temp!
ReplyDeleteBUT, I found it to be super easy and didn't hurt at all! I was told to pinch the skin tightly with one hand and with my other hand lay my arm/wrist on my body and use the wrist to inject; so the needle would go in easier, I did about 2 weeks worth of follistem and never got one bruise! You could see a little dot after the injection. Also, we did them in my tummy (other option was thigh) and like I said it wasn't bad, maybe you shouldn't let it get to room temp. Hope my 2 cents helps. GL!
Thanks so much for your input! I'm going to have to try that tonight. I bruise so easily anyway that I pretty much expect them anytime a needle makes contact with my skin. It was the soreness that was little shocking to me. But last night was much better when it was at room temp so I think I'm going to stick with that (pun intended!) :)
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