STIM Injections Day Two

Well, day two is in the books. I hope.

I’m not totally sure because Murphy’s Law has struck again.

Today, I went to a friend’s parents house to cook “Sunday” dinner (where I had a great time and totally love her family and getting to meet them!!). We got there around 3pm to start cooking and I knew we would be there for a while, so I brought a cooler with my meds in them so I wouldn’t miss my 8pm injection.

Around 7:50pm I went into the bathroom to set up. One of the injections, Menopur, comes in two vials. One with a powder and one with sodium chloride. One milliliter of the sodium chloride must be drawn into a syringe and then injected into the vial with the powder to mix them. However, when I went to do this tonight, I noticed that there was almost no powder in the vial. I thought this was super weird because I could’ve sworn there had been more in it when I did it the night before. But I went ahead with the injection anyway and made a note to check the rest of the vials when I got home to make sure this was correct and that I didn’t need to take another dose.

When I got home, I took the dogs outside to go potty (I am sitting for my parents’ two while they see Boy George tonight), which was it’s own adventure. W had serious stomach issues and the other two just wanted to run circles around us while W emptied himself. I’m still not sure they actually used the bathroom.

When we got back inside and unleashed, I opened every box of Menopur I have and each vial showed the exact same amount of powder in them. Which had been much more than what I’d injected earlier, so I thought maybe I should do another injection just to be safe. So, I got out everything I needed for the second injection and took it to the kitchen. As I was unwrapping the syringe, someone started shooting off fireworks and all the dogs started going crazy, barking and running around. Trying my best to ignore them, I went to work drawing up the sodium chloride. I picked up the vial of powder and THERE WAS NOTHING IN IT!!

What the actual F$@%?!

I had literally just checked it and there was powder in there!! I was so confused. Were my hands too hot and causing it to dissolve or something?? How was it dissolving so fast?!

A quick Google search turned up nothing, so I called the REACH center’s after hours number to ask about it. I had to leave a message (with a live person), but they sent it to an on-call nurse who called me back almost immediately. Almost.

I really should have learned my lesson in patience by now, but I was just so confused and was starting to think I was going crazy. So in the span of time it took for me to hang up the phone and for her to call me back, I had already begun work on a third vial. I pulled this one out of the box (stepping over dog puke in the process, because, of course), not even bothering with the sodium chloride bottle this time (there is plenty in each bottle for two doses), I checked the powder level to make sure the correct amount was in there, very carefully took the cap off the vial, drew up the sodium chloride from the original vial and, without touching the powder bottle, stuck the needle into it to get ready to inject the sodium chloride. I checked the powder one more time to be sure before I mixed it.

No powder.

Y’all, IT WAS GONE. AGAIN.

I didn’t even have time to get pissed about it because as I was checking the powder level, I received that call back. In between dog pandemonium in the background (they’d moved onto rough-housing at that point), I explained what was happening to the nurse, and she said she thinks that I’m still getting the correct amount of medicine and that the powder is just dissolving unnaturally fast…?!

I’m not convinced that’s the case, but she said they’d check my blood levels Monday to be sure, and if I wasn’t getting the correct dosage, they would just increase it. And since I was worried about how much I’d wasted, she assured me they have refills and told me to toss the two I’d just put together. I asked if I could refrigerate them but that was a no-go.

I battled with myself for a few minutes, not wanting to waste them, but also not wanting to mess this up. I only get one shot at it, and I can’t afford for it not to work. Eventually I decided to trust the process. It hurt my soul to pour those two extra syringes down the sink, but I did it.

And now, we wait.