shoot it up....

Things I have learned today:

-> That no matter how many times you practice injecting into a sponge, there's still something distinctly unsettling about holding a syringe with a 5cm long needle over your own thigh (and that even the thought of a 5cm long needle freaks lots of people out...)

-> That my wife stabs the needle into the practice sponge with just a touch too much gusto for comfort.

-> That when offered a count of three before plunging it into my leg, it's best to just bite the bullet and to go for it before the count reaches "two".

-> That if you give yourself enough of a run-up, and if you take care to relax your thigh muscle, the needle actually goes in silently and painlessly, and almost before you know where you are, you're done.

-> That a jab given like this takes about 4-5 hours to take effect. T

-> That this is also how long it takes for the side-effects to kick in, and is why you would normally administer the injection last thing at night, before you go to bed, rather than first thing in the morning, before you go to work.

-> That a 5 hour wait, not knowing how hard (or otherwise) you are going to be hit by side-effects, is a killer.

-> That, so far, a heady cocktail of ibuprofen and paracetamol seems to have been enough to limit the side-effects to a dull, fuzzy, throbbing head. Manageable enough, anyway, that I'm still in the office at 7pm and not in bed with a wet towel over my head.

-> Not yet, anyway.

An interesting day. I feel like I've acquired a new skill, albeit one that I never really expected to pick up, and one that I wish I didn't need..... but it's all gone okay so far, and that's as much as I could ask for, really.

It's only this first jab that needs to be supervised, so from next week, I'll be doing it from home and it will really be business as usual. I'll have to have regular bloodtests to make sure everything is okay (especially my liver function, apparently), and I'll follow up every so often with the MS Nurses and with the neurologists, but this is now officially just a once-weekly occurence in my normal, every day existence. I'll never really know if this is doing me any good as the drug is only licensed to (maybe) slow down the progression of the disease. The very best I can hope for is that I don't get any worse than I am now, and although that could be a slightly depressing thought if I chose to dwell on it, I think that it's still a whole lot better than doing nothing.