Bubble Trouble
Last Friday I used a syringe for the golden dose. Drawing it up was easy. Getting the needle in far enough turned out to be the part I got wrong.
I’d got very used to the pen.
Hold it against the skin, push the plunger down, wait, done. The needle is so small that your brain barely gets a chance to object.
The syringe is a different animal.
Last Friday I used one for the golden dose.
Drawing it up was pretty straightforward, and there’s something I noticed that might help anyone else thinking about it. As I drew the medication out of the tube, the pen’s plunger moved with it. So whatever mechanical limit the manufacturer has built in to stop the pen delivering more than its four doses, it isn’t the plunger. The plunger follows the liquid out. The limit is a separate thing.
I drew out 0.6 ml, a single dose’s worth. And there was still more in there. Not much more, but clearly more than a single dose in total. Nowhere near enough for two.
That’s one pen. From what I’d read, it varies from pen to pen, so I wouldn’t treat it as a number you can count on.
Then I had to actually inject it, and I hesitated. The needle looked long next to the pen needle, and some cautious part of my brain decided I probably shouldn’t push it all the way in.
That turned out to be the wrong call.
The medication didn’t disappear under the skin the way it does with the pen. It sat there instead, as a hard, raised bubble in my thigh, a bit like a deep blister. Fluid, just under the surface, going nowhere.
I smoothed it out with my fingers and the fluid gradually dispersed. It left a small lump behind, which then got itchy.
The irony is that I was more scared of going in too far than I needed to be. As far as I can tell, a short insulin needle is meant to go in fully, into the layer of fat under the skin, and the thigh has plenty of that. Stopping short is what caused the problem, not the needle.
I’m not giving anyone injection advice here. That’s just what I got wrong.
The following morning, the eggy burps were back, along with the gut churning.
I’d not had either for a week. So it’s a crude sort of evidence, but pretty unmistakable: the dose had worked. However badly I’d handled the needle, the drug clearly got where it needed to go.
What I took from it is how much the pen quietly does for you. With the pen, you never think about needle depth, or how much liquid you’re dealing with, or where it ends up.
With a syringe, suddenly you’re responsible for all of it.
And in my case, that included accidentally making a small blister under my own skin.