Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Kristin learns to shot herself

So in November I was given the opportunity to switch to a different insulin. The problem has been that I have not been able to give myself the injections, Shannon has had to do it. I have been really dependent on him due to this. I have cancelled dinners, rearranged appointments and been late to work. It still makes me cringed to think about the injections, seriously, even as I type this. You would laugh if you saw how tiny these needles are. Either way, I have not been able to do it myself. At this appointment, the doctor gave me some syringes, a vial (with saline in it) and a injectease contraption to practice. This hides the needle. Its sort of like the thing I use to check my blood sugar on my finger and I know a lot of you have seen that. So this is all kind of amusing. The first thing I have to be able to do is stick the syringe needle into the vial. I would get so close and could not do it. So I practiced and finally was able to do that. Next I tried the next step, sticking the needle in something. I had a little squishy stress ball to practice sticking it into.
I told a family friend that is a nurse, just how much trouble I am having with this. She says she will show me how to do it. I would not say its showing me how to do it, its getting over my fear of it or something. Anyway, I met up with my family friend, Robyn. So I meet Robyn at her house after work one day. I took everything I had to her. We sat there for nearly 3 hours. This is sort of hard to type out but it was a bit traumatic for me and funny also. She was seeing how hard it was for me to comfortably just pick up the needle and stick it in the vial. We started with that and she gave me some pointers on that. There were little steps to get me to the point of using the injectease. Eventually she had me holding the needle to her with the injectease and sticking her with it. Keep in mind, she was pushing my hand because I could not do this. It was funny too, now that I think about it. She was swearing at me and telling me she would never talk to me again if I didnt stick her and things. So eventually I was being "forced" to hold it against me and inject it in me. 3 hours later, I had been able to do this. (Yay, I was hungry and wanted to go home and eat.)
I got to call Meaghan and tell her I could do this, finally. So my next appointment, she gave me the insulin to start using. Now I am doing the injections myself, unfortunately I am eating more and probably gaining more weight too. The only problem now is the little bruises I get. I will find out more on my next appointment, this friday.
By the way, the starting on insulin is not due to diabetes being worse. It is to have better control of my diabetes and blood sugar mainly

1 comment:

Tami said...

And yay! You can finally do it! Um...and if you gained any weight recently, I'd go ahead and blame it all on the Cheesecake Factory.