NotSheep

You’ll already have read the first bit of this story if you’re a regular here and not one of the people who’s arrived as a result of me crowing about my accomplishments on an email list somewhere - in case you’re one of the latter, however, you can find the sorry beginnings of this tale here

After all that brouhaha, and after being told by a midwife that they were doing me “a big favour” coming out to do the injections at all, I’d had enough. I don’t need or want favours that leave the donors feeling resentful or like they’re owed something. I got so mad I decided that the best thing was to do the injections myself.

The other thing you need to know is that I am needle-phobic, and have been for as long as I remember. I’ve never even been able to watch people getting injected on televison. I remember three injections that I had before puberty, and I managed to pass out at every one of them - sometimes multiple times. After an appendectomy, when a particularly unsympathetic nurse was taking blood from me and I said I felt faint, and she responded, “Don’t be silly, you can’t faint lying flat on your back”, I promptly proved her wrong. When everyone else in my year at school got a vaccine for something (BCG? can’t remember), my mother signed the “no” bit on the form, because she knew what I was like. And so the rest of the class toddled off from Geography to get jabbed, and I and one other person stayed behind. And then we all went to English class, during which the boy seated next to Martin Somebody said “Miss, Martin’s not feeling well” and we all turned to look at Martin and he was green…and I, knowing that the cause of his green-ness involved a needle twenty minutes earlier, fell out of my chair and woke up in the hall.

So yeah, pretty bad about needles. Even working in a hospital lab - even in Blood Bank, even in Pathology, where you really do see some gross things - didn’t help.

Those of you who don’t have any phobias won’t understand this at all; you’ll think it’s daft and unreasonable - and you’d be right. But those who are needle-phobic will understand why this decision was, for me, a huge one.

Of course, never having even watched an injection, I was starting from a fairly, uh, uneducated position.

But google is my friend, as is youtube. And I read lots of websites and forums and watched all the youtube videos of people getting and giving IM injections - at least, all the ones that didn’t involve people getting their jollies from it (and really, what on earth is up with that? I thought the diaper-fetishists were bad enough, but injections? Eh?) And 5.30 this morning found me lying in bed, in the dark (so as not to wake Toby) watching and reading more. And feeling stressed as I realised that in less than five hours a midwife would arrive and I would a) have to have a needle in me one way or another and b) have to try to convince her to let me do it myself.

By 9 o’clock, I was tired enough that I wanted to go back to bed. By 10 o’clock I felt sick. And the midwife was late…

By the time the midwife and a student arrived, at about 11, I wasn’t in a fit state for anything. I had said on the phone yesterday that I wanted to learn to self-inject, but obviously nobody took me seriously, because they were surprised and worried when I said it this morning. The midwife didn’t know if it was legal for me to do it; I asked under what law it would be illegal, and how exceptions were made for women injecting fertility meds, body-builders injecting steroids, etc. I told her I’d read about lots of people self-injecting B12 IM. She accepted that it might be legal for me to do it, but worried that she might not be allowed to teach me. I suggested she sat next to me while I did it and told her what I was doing, so she didn’t have to say or do anything unless I was getting it dangerously wrong. She wasn’t going for it. She said she’d have to speak to her Supervisor, and she’d do the first injection today and come back on Monday and if it was okay she’d teach me then. I pointed out that I’d been working myself up to this and that a weekend of further nervous waiting wasn’t something I was willing to take. She tried to contact her Supervisor but the paging system failed. I phoned the GP (which I needed to do anyway to get a prescription for folate), and he said he was happy for me to self-inject if she was happy to show me - she was still hesitant (the GP, hearing her in the background, said to me, “it sounds like she just doesn’t want to do it”). I suggested we phone the Royal College of Midwives and ask for a professional opinion, but in the end she phoned the local fertility clinic (the irony!) who assured her that yes, it was perfectly permissible for a professional in her position to teach me what to do.

And so she did.

I already had the procedure of actually injecting well-memorised, but wasn’t completely clear on all the preparatory stages - getting the stuff from the vial into the syringe, etc. We got through that without any trouble though, and then I found myself sitting on the sofa, one trouser-leg pulled down past my thigh and a needle attached to a syringe full of cobalamin in my hand…

This was the point I had thought might take an hour - getting pysched enough to actually do it. But a couple of deep breaths and…I did it.

I shut my eyes as I started to push the needle through the skin, but had to open them to pull the plunger back to check for blood (which would have meant the tip of the needle was in a blood vessel rather than the muscle and I’d have to start over). I pushed the plunger in a lot slower than I’ve ever had anyone else do it, but in fact it hurt less that way so I’ll stick with doing that!

I am quite ridiculously proud of myself; I know that for a lot of people this is a minor thing, but for me it was a Very Big Deal Indeed. I still need more syringes and needles and a sharps disposal box, so a midwife will come back on Monday morning with those, and sit with me while I do the second injection, but after that I’m on my own - and I’m quite happy with that! The midwfe and student who were here said I did a good job, and you know, I actually think I did