the pharmaceautical company has inundated me with marketing information over the past few weeks (the money they spend on the collateral and support material for these drugs must be astronomical- i guess is reflects the money they make off the drugs.) then, everyone from the insurance department to the specialty pharmacy started blowing up my cell phone. i swear, i called someone back from shared solutions (pharmaceutical company) at least a couple times a week. they also assigned a nurse to do a home visit, when she would teach me how to inject the medicine.
shelby came over on thursday afternoon, and i was lucky she likes animals (especially golden retrievers), b/c they were swarming all over us! madisen (the dog) thought she was there just to see her, and madeline (my cat- the "not as fat" one) was doing her usual protective hovering, trailing me everywhere i went. i've done subcutaneous injections before, as that was the format betaseron is in, so i knew the basic steps. my tremors seem to have settled in for the long haul, so i had more difficulty grasping the injection device- finite motor skills are proving difficult. the
autoject is almost identical, even tho the needle is a little smaller, but it makes that familiar trademark *pop* when it goes in (the sound is worse than the shot itself, in my opinion.) what i wasn't expecting though, was for it to HURT like hell for about 30 minutes after the injection! it felt like i was being stung by an entire royal kingdom of wasps!! i thought, well maybe i'm just not used to injections anymore. after all, it's been almost a year since i stopped the betaseron. so i tentatively ask shelby, "um, is it supposed to hurt like this?" her response? "oh yes, it will be like that for a couple minutes. just press the cotton ball against the injection site." i kept pressing, but either my sense of time is totally warped, or it was way longer than 2 minutes. it was burning, and stinging, and just overall incredibly uncomfortable- i could feel my face twisting into various positions as i tried to pretend it wasn't that bad.
a couple hours and a lovely red welt later, my leg was back to normal, no worse for the wear than it was earlier that morning. the whole experience really wasn't that bad, and i'm probably venting more than usual only b/c i'm reliving it. i just hope that i won't develop horrible anxiety about doing the shot each time. that happened at times with the betaseron, and that injection was every other day. with this being every single day, i'm a little nervous that i will start brewing a sense of dread hours in advance. but, some diabetics have to give themselves shots 2-3 times a day! if they can do it, so can i. not to mention that this medicine is crucial to (hopefully) halting the path of further disability that my MS is taking. so, really, i can't complain. (until tomorrow when i start whining about it.)
remember, you can view these postings directly on kit katchat's blog http://meggerv2.blogspot.com/
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