Update #2 on the egg-donation front
Hidy ho neighbor! -grin- Tonight will be my third night on the injection section of the cycle. Here's the deal: After having me on the pill for about three and a half weeks, they delivered to my house a big white shopping bag full of injectable medications, needles, alcohol prep pads, gauze, my non-injectable medications, and anything else they think I might need. Sunday, I started on Lupron. Don't ask me what Lupron does, exactly, but it's most "fun" side effect is a lowering of Estrogen in my body, which means, evidently, that I can do about one or maybe two hours of normal activity (standing at the stove cooking breakfast counts) before I feel EXHAUSTED. -grumble grumble- Monday I thought I had the flu! But I emailed my most favorite nurse in the whole world, who told me it was probably just the estrogen thing, and as soon as I started on my Next injectibles, it'd go away. Yay!
Today, I took my last birth control pill, my li'l thyroid pill, my Doxycycline (sp?) which I have to take twice a day with food for about a week, and I'll do the Lupron tonight (you can inject the injectables any time of the day, as long as you're consistant.
The Lupron's the most easy med to take, next to swallowing a tiny pill. I just reach into my magic shopping bag of Doom, and pull out the lupron box (maybe the size of a football). It has a little glass vial with a rubber stopper, plenty of li'l syringes, and a pile of alcohol wipes in it. I open two alcohol wipes, wipe the rubber stopper, and pick a spot either on my lower tummy, or upper thigh (the parts where there's plenty of fat under the skin) and swipe it too. Then I unwrap a tiny syringe, pull the stopper back until it has 10 units of air in it, shove the needle through the rubber stopper and turn the whole thing upside-down to inject the air through the clear liquid and into the glass bottle. Now that I've pressurized the bottle, I make sure the tip of the needle is in the fluid, and draw just over 10 units of fluid back into the syringe, and remove it from the bottle. (Then turn the syringe up and flick it to get the bubble to the top, and squirt the bubble out, and cackle like a mad scientist!) Now I have a clean patch on my tummy, and a sterile syringe full of exactly ten units of sterile clear fluid.
The next bit is the part most people have trouble with. I take that clean patch on my tummy (or whatever) and pinch it a bit so it's a little hill. Then, just as if I were a dart board, and the syringe was a dart, I bulls-eye the little hill, then push down the plunger while letting up on the pinch, so the skin settles. If I picked a good spot, the Lupron settles into the tissue without disturbing it too much, and the spot itches for a minute, and that's it. (I wipe the spot again with alcohol for good measure, after the injection. 'Can't be too careful!) If I DIDn't pick a good spot, and hit a blood vessel, the Lupron all tries to push through the tiny vessels near the skin, and ruptures a bunch of them, and I get a purple bruise about the size of a dime. No big deal. It still itches for a minute, then is fine.
I say the Lupron is easy, comparitively, because the next meds that get added to the army of bottles and syringes are injectables that I have to RE-CONSTITUTE before I can take them. Two more to add to the daily regimen, on top of the Lupron. Then eventually, the night before the egg retrieval surgery, I'll need to do an intra-muscular med that's a LOT of fluid, and it's refrigerated, which is an interesting sensation. Do we all know where the biggest muscle in the body is? yup. That night I'll be sleeping on my tummy for sure!
More to come. I'll keep ya posted.
Much love! -Amanda
Today, I took my last birth control pill, my li'l thyroid pill, my Doxycycline (sp?) which I have to take twice a day with food for about a week, and I'll do the Lupron tonight (you can inject the injectables any time of the day, as long as you're consistant.
The Lupron's the most easy med to take, next to swallowing a tiny pill. I just reach into my magic shopping bag of Doom, and pull out the lupron box (maybe the size of a football). It has a little glass vial with a rubber stopper, plenty of li'l syringes, and a pile of alcohol wipes in it. I open two alcohol wipes, wipe the rubber stopper, and pick a spot either on my lower tummy, or upper thigh (the parts where there's plenty of fat under the skin) and swipe it too. Then I unwrap a tiny syringe, pull the stopper back until it has 10 units of air in it, shove the needle through the rubber stopper and turn the whole thing upside-down to inject the air through the clear liquid and into the glass bottle. Now that I've pressurized the bottle, I make sure the tip of the needle is in the fluid, and draw just over 10 units of fluid back into the syringe, and remove it from the bottle. (Then turn the syringe up and flick it to get the bubble to the top, and squirt the bubble out, and cackle like a mad scientist!) Now I have a clean patch on my tummy, and a sterile syringe full of exactly ten units of sterile clear fluid.
The next bit is the part most people have trouble with. I take that clean patch on my tummy (or whatever) and pinch it a bit so it's a little hill. Then, just as if I were a dart board, and the syringe was a dart, I bulls-eye the little hill, then push down the plunger while letting up on the pinch, so the skin settles. If I picked a good spot, the Lupron settles into the tissue without disturbing it too much, and the spot itches for a minute, and that's it. (I wipe the spot again with alcohol for good measure, after the injection. 'Can't be too careful!) If I DIDn't pick a good spot, and hit a blood vessel, the Lupron all tries to push through the tiny vessels near the skin, and ruptures a bunch of them, and I get a purple bruise about the size of a dime. No big deal. It still itches for a minute, then is fine.
I say the Lupron is easy, comparitively, because the next meds that get added to the army of bottles and syringes are injectables that I have to RE-CONSTITUTE before I can take them. Two more to add to the daily regimen, on top of the Lupron. Then eventually, the night before the egg retrieval surgery, I'll need to do an intra-muscular med that's a LOT of fluid, and it's refrigerated, which is an interesting sensation. Do we all know where the biggest muscle in the body is? yup. That night I'll be sleeping on my tummy for sure!
More to come. I'll keep ya posted.
Much love! -Amanda