Trigger Happy!

It's done!

I'm not going to lie, it was the most stressful few minutes of my life.  Even though we asked the nurse before we left Sheffield on Wednesday and she said it was 0.5ml, naturally we doubted ourselves.  All of the previous injections have been in pre-filled pens (like Gonal F) or you draw it into the syringe yourself but use the full dose (like Cetrotide).  It's been so long since we had the tutorial that I was really nervous about doing it wrong.

Fortunately, ALS kept a level head as always, got 0.5ml in the syringe and injected me as normal.  It must have been a thicker needle as it was really tough to pierce the skin and quite painful - nothing unbearable though.  The other reason for this could be because we had to use the same needle to draw the medicine up as we did to inject it, therefore piercing the rubber on the bottle may have blunted the needle somewhat.

Either way, it's not hugely painful in the grand scheme of things and that is the LAST injection (at least until we start getting ready for transfer).

I've been absolutely drained today so I'm looking forward to an early night and not having to get up at 6am to do the Cetrotide.  Tomorrow will be all about relaxing before heading to London as our train doesn't leave until 8pm!

My next post will be after egg retrieval, probably when we get home on Tuesday.

Wish us luck.

Cetrotide Top Tip!

I've found that my Cetrotide injections are either really painful or I pretty much don't feel them - with no middle ground.  The other day I read something about keeping the bevel of the needle pointing upwards so the sharpest bit goes in first.  We made sure we did that this morning and lo and behold, I didn't even notice it go it!









As you can see from the image above, if you're putting it in with that pointing down it's going to be trying to force the blunter bit through first.

Just thought I'd share that with you in case you're having the same problem - it's always something worth trying.

Other people have mentioned using ice packs to numb the area beforehand but I haven't found this to be necessary so I haven't tried it.  I did forget to take my injection out of the fridge earlier than I needed to do it this morning so I did it cold and again, it didn't add to my pain.  That's not to say that it won't make a difference for others though.

Any tips you'd like to share?  Maybe you've found something that works with certain meds but not others, or something unusual?