My RAD Life

But I think it gets easier...

In the last post I said I’d become a stabbing pro. I may have exaggerated a bit, but I will say that it has gotten much easier. It still hurts and it’s still not fun, but I don’t have to give myself a five minute pep talk before injecting myself anymore. I don’t have to countdown from 10, just to start the countdown again (it only takes the one countdown). I just take a deep breath, breathe out and press the blue top of the injection pen, count to 15 as the medicine flows in and I hear the second click and, walla!

I will share a few slight incidents in the Enbrel Chronicles however.

First up, traveling with Enbrel.
My third shot would find me on a trip to Costa Rica, which meant traveling with a medicine that had to be refrigerated but couldn’t be frozen. I packed it in my backpack with the Enbrel travel ice pack and a larger ice pack. This actually stayed cold enough to make it through six hours on a plane and five hours in a car.

I lucked out, because in Costa Rica I had a fridge in my room. When we arrived the room wasn’t ready, so the very, very nice woman at Hotel Luna Lleyna in Playa Tamarindo (I highly recommend this place, but that probably belongs on a different blog) stuck my medication in the beer fridge. When the power randomly went out for a day, she filled a big container with ice to keep the medication cold.

All of this refrigeration was a bit of a pain, but dealable. Laughably, when I finally gave myself the injection, I didn’t let it warm up enough – it didn’t quite make it to room temperature – and the shot hurt quite a bit and left a bruise that lasted for the rest of the trip. I won’t make that mistake again!

Second, the glitchy blue button…
I was feeling confident about my injection after Costa Rica. I had done this a few times. It hurt, but it wasn’t that bad. I also now knew to make absolutely sure it was at room temperature, so I let the pen warm for 35 minutes before sitting down to give myself the injection. I did my little internal pep talk (not the five minute version, the 30-second elevator pitch version) and my countdown and pressed the blue top, nothing. I adjusted the pen, did the countdown, and pressed again, still nothing. I did another countdown, changed my finger placement and pressed again, nothing.

I began randomly pushing it from every angle, nothing, nothing, then randomly CLICK! I think I visibly jumped, but did manage to hold the pressure to my leg.

Not sure why it was so glitchy, but some of the medication definitely ended up on my thigh rather than in it.

Finally, a weird injection site welt.
After the  startling injection the week before, I was a bit nervous, but this injection turned out to be easy and pain free. I was relieved. I felt I was finally making headway.

Then, about 12 hours later, while at work I may add, my thigh started itching. I was wearing a skirt, so I scratched and was appalled to find an orange-sized welt at the injection site. I Googled it and found it was relatively  common, so I refrained from freaking out.

I used hydro-cortisone cream and the welt eventually turned to a bump and eventually faded (it took about 24 hours for it to disappear). I’m hoping that was a one time thing, but I’ll keep you updated.