Whew! I just gave Jessi her first mixed injection. The first few days we were doing the Lupron injections, there was only one medicine, so I just had to put the syringe into the vial, draw up the dose, and inject it into Jessi's subcutaneous layer. We'd been doing it right below the belly button.
But this time was a lot more intense, as there were several different drugs in play. Mixing and injecting at home is quite a freak out, but it really makes sense economically, as it saves on cost of dealing with it in the office, but allows your doctor the freedom to alter the ratio across the treatment.
If you're really interested, you can watch the five minute video on mixing the medicines yourself. We watched it three times today, once to refamiliarize ourselves with the process, once as we pantomimed with the materials, and finally once as we actually put all the pieces together. It's pretty complicated with multiple syringes, multiple liquid components, and multiple powdered components.
We did it! I feel really good about the process now, and feel confident that I've just delivered the correct dosage.
The biggest surprise was that the new insertion needle in larger than the previous one (the whole syringe is larger, to accommodate larger quantity of medicine), and so it requires more force to go into the skin and is more painful. I'm a bit concerned that I started pushing the medicine out before the needle was fully in, but I think it was in far enough to deliver it to the subcutaneous layer.