Let’s do shots – the “receiver’s” point of view

It wasn’t really the shots that ever made me react emotionally; it was really the quantity of what we were having to deal with.  Three shots every night for several days – that’s a lot!!  And the few times when we had to add a different type of needle into the process also made me nervous because I didn’t know if this new needle was actually going to hurt when the others hadn’t so far.  So the days of adding new injections were the hardest, but each one turned out just fine. None of the injections ever really hurt.  I’m just glad I don’t have any real problems with needles.

Here’s the schedule of what I like to call the “pin cushion days”:
1.  Ten days of Lupron injections.  This was to get everything to shut down so that I didn’t have a normal cycle.  Pretty easy stuff – small doses, small needle, really quick.  Maybe only a small bruise or two.  No problem.

2. Ten days of the serious stuff.  This was a combination of Lupron (to make sure the other hormones didn’t make my ovaries go out of control), a dose of low dose hormones and a dose of Gonal-F (another hormone).  The purpose of the second two hormones was to get the follicles in my ovaries to start growing, and to get more than one follicle growing at a time.  Each follicle has the potential to be home to one egg, and we were hoping to get as many eggs as possible.  

Now we were up to three shots every night, so a little strategy was involved.  I had to take turns in which thigh I would give two injections and the third always went in my belly.  Again, the needles were pretty small and the doses were completely manageable.  But every once in a while the angle of the injection (which I was giving myself) would be a little off and I’d end up with a pretty gnarly bruise (as shown in the picture of my thigh). Really nothing that hurt, but seeing that blood was sometimes just overwhelming and dropped a bomb of reality in my lap of everything I was having to do in this process, and it was hard to deal with.  Most of the time it was pretty straightforward to handle, but there were a few days when I just wanted it all to be over.

3. Finally, there was one injection – the trigger shot – required about 36 hours before the retrieval.  It was just one injection (which was a welcome break), but it was a very large dose.   I was already feeling pretty icky with everything that was going on inside, so I was a little nervous that this was just going to make me feel worse.  Another easy injection, and then it was just wait and see what happened at the retrieval.

One thing throughout all of these shots that has been so amazing is having Joe there to help.  As he’s mentioned, he’s had a ton of experience around needles and labs, so he was easily able to help put together every dose of every injection I had to take.  Not having to worry about making sure I was preparing the needles correctly, with the right amount of stuff, every night was a huge relief.  It allowed me to focus on just getting through the injections.  It really meant a lot to be able to rely on him for that part of the process.