Adventures With Injectibles

I survived my first injection! Despite a few mis-haps, DH gave me my first Bravelle shot last night and it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Here's a little bit abut the process:

We started by removing the syringe from it's packaging and attaching a Q-cap which helps mix the medicine. Next, we removed 1 ml of sodium chloride from the first vial and injected it into the second vial, where the Bravelle is in a concentrated pill. The sodium chloride and the Bravelle combined and we drew that 1 ml of liquid back into the syringe. Here's where things got a little nutty. The next step was to remove the Q-cap from the syringe and attach the needle. I managed to do that but when I went to take the cap off, I broke needle. DH went to get another one but couldn't find them. That's right -- somehow we had managed to lose a bag filled with 19 new needles! It took us about 20 minutes of crazed searching before we finally realized they had fallen off the self in our pantry into another bag. By now, we were both a little frazzled -- we really wanted to make sure we were doing everything right and "losing" the needles didn't inspire a whole lot of confidence in our ability to pull this off! One we calmed down, DH attached a new needle but we hit another snag attempting to get all of the air bubbles out of the syringe. After five minutes of trying to tap them out, we finally decided a very small one couldn't do much harm and it was time to do the injection. I swabbed the area on my belly with several alcohol pads (anything to prolong the inevitable!) and pinched the skin where the shot would go. DH thought it was a good idea if I gave myself the first injection just in case I ever had to do it alone so I picked up the syringe, held it like a dart as instructed, and took several deep breaths. When I went to jab myself, I exploded into a fit of giggles. I couldn't help it! The nerves took over and every time I tried to do the injection, I laughed uncontrollably instead. DH finally took the syringe from me and stuck me in the stomach. Injection #1 was a success! After all of that preparation, the shot was over in just a few seconds and while it didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would, I wouldn't call it painless either. All in all, the whole thing took a little more than a half hour but I'm hoping it will go more smoothly tonight. Let's hope that my follies are kicking into high gear!