So tonight, I am live-blogging my first injection of leuprolide acetate. Okay, so it's not really live - this is the Internet, after all, you have no idea when I'm actually typing anything or if it's even happening - but I promise I'm writing in real time. Near real time, anyway.
This is the first shot I am giving myself ever, which I guess isn't too surprising when you consider that injectable meds are rarely considered the first line of defense for common health issues. I just feel like I should be more confident about it. When I had my IVF orientation meeting I was so uncomfortable with the injection demonstration that I was all smiley and jokey with the nurse and said I had no questions just to get it over with. I was much calmer when we were going over paperwork. Paperwork, now there's something I can do.
The thing is that my questions about the injections are not the ones that she could answer. How much will it hurt? Will the side effects be really bad? Why do I have to do this to have a child and other people just enjoy a well-timed orgasm? (Edited to add: not much; still to early to say; nobody knows.)
Anyway. In preparation for this evening, I've been keeping an informal log of the various "side effect" symptoms I've experienced over the last few days of my drug-free existence, in the hope that I would freak out less when I actually had lab-made hormones running around in my system. For instance, on Friday, I had what felt like menstrual cramps (but weren't); they were bad enough that I considered actually taking some ibuprofen, but then they went away with no explanation. On Saturday, my sciatic nerve hurt intermittently. On Sunday, for about 20 minutes I felt nauseous enough that I was discreetly looking for places to throw up in public if necessary. Okay, so that last one was directly attributable to motion sickness, but my point is that life is full of random little ailments. Most are temporary. Many would never even be worth complaining about. They're no big deal. I NEED TO REMEMBER THIS.
But now I'm just stalling. Ready, everybody? Time to inject some leuprolide. My essential self-injection supplies appear below.
...
And we're back.
If you ever find yourself injecting hormones into your body, I cannot overstate the importance of having a frosted sugar cookie on hand. Please, don't take any risks with this.
But seriously, it wasn't that bad. I cut myself while shaving my legs a few days ago and that was ten times worse, pain-wise. I'm just so resentful that I'm doing this in the first place, which is something I didn't feel when I nicked myself in the shower. (Though maybe I should have been resentful that I was shaving my legs at all, in a sort of second-wave-post-feminist-join-the-sisterhood kind of way?) And I'm also driving myself nuts thinking about the giant hormone molecules currently dispersing themselves throughout my body, just dying to start trouble. I'll be keeping a close eye on them. :::shifty eyes:::
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