Hot Shot

Friday, 7-17-09 (Day 17)

Dexamethasone (.75mg, oral pill): Today we traveled down south to chaperon a State Youth Rally, so my diet consisted of road trip food. I'm pretty sure I downed at least 3,000 calories.

Lupron (5units, subQ injection): Today's injection was given by Freddie, my brother-in-law. It's hilarious to watch the faces of our friends and families as they jab me with a needle.

I think deep down they really enjoy it.

Follistim (225units, subQ injection): The youth rally was held in a gym; and it had to be at least 85 degrees when we arrived around 5pm, so of course I was a hot, cranky mess. I was trying so hard to be a good sport, but traveling with meds-especially some that have to be refrigerated-can be a bit stressful, especially when you are taking three shots a day and trying to stick to fairly strict injection schedule. Mix in the heat, road trip food and a dull headache and your just asking for trouble.

So at 6:30pm my husband and I headed into the large industrial refrigerator in the school's kitchen where our meds were stored. Due to the lack of a unisex bathroom or any other private place for that matter, we resorted to injecting inside the fridge. While he loaded our Follistim pen I tried to find a way to successfully block the door so no one would walk in while I had my sundress lifted up high to expose my midsection. After tackling that last obstacle by placing a large box of water in front of the metal door and praying no one would barge in, we hurried to give the shot so we could work on drawing Luveris next.

I'm not sure if it was because we were rushed or because we were both terrified someone would violate our fridge space, but tonight's injection had me near tears. I kept telling my husband that this was a bad idea, that hiding in a fridge in the kitchen of a school while chaperoning a lock-in type sleepover right smack in the middle of my stims was absolutely crazy, he just kept repeating, "it's for the Lord, babe, it's for the Lord...".

And it made me smile.

Luveris (1/2ml, subQ injection): I wish I could say the Follistim was the end of the night's drama for us, but it wasn't.

After the Follistim shot was complete, I quickly found the Luveris bottle in our cooler and searched for the syringe and needles that went with it, but soon realized that I had left them out in the car. Dangerously frustrated, we decided that he would stay there with the kids and I would go back to the hotel that his mom and cousin were staying at to calm down, cool off, and give myself the Luveris injection.

Once at the hotel, I tried to draw out the ridiculously small remainder of the Luveris from the bottle with no luck. After about ten minutes of fighting with it, I called my mom and explained to her what was wrong and ended up having a melt down, sobbing quietly into the phone. Always steady, she did her best to calm me and suggested drawing up another batch of the Luveris instead of trying to use yesterdays left overs, so I took a deep breath, hung up the phone, and did as I was told.

But even after mixing up another batch and giving myself the injection, I realized about half of it was still left sitting in the syringe. I knew I had to be doing something wrong, and it made me even more nervous to think about last nights injection being wrong too, especially since this is the medicine that affects the quality of our eggs. Trying their best to help me, my mother-in-law and cousin drove me to Right Aid where the pharmaceutical technician told us he wasn't qualified to help us, and then off to a hospital where we were finally able to speak to a nurse about the syringe and injection issues.

Very long story short, I was drawing the wrong amount of diluent, putting only .1cc (ml) into the powder mixture instead of 1cc (ml). I was completely reading the syringe wrong. No wonder I was having trouble-have you ever tried to draw out .05cc (ml) out of a tiny bottle using a 1 1/2" gage needle?

I have. It doesn't work.

I suppose it's because all of my other meds are such small doses that I just didn't pay enough attention to this one being so much larger, but either way, I basically received a super concentrated dose last night, and again tonight, although I was able to remix and fix tonight's mistake after speaking to Dr. Greene in a very embarrassing conversation to his house at 9pm.

Because of tonight's fiasco, I missed most of the service at the youth rally, and I'll probably end up being at least one bottle short of my Luveris. The devil was really trying hard to discourage me tonight, and I'm ashamed to admit that I gave in-dramatically-complete with a breakdown. But in the end everything worked out, God is in control, and no harm was done.

After all, it was for the Lord.

"You will come to know that what appears today to be a sacrifice will prove instead to be the greatest investment that you will ever make."
-Gorden B. Hinkely