3rd time’s a charm

I am a night owl.  I don’t like waking up early.  My internal clock has always been a little late.  In a perfect world I would get up at 10:00 a.m. and go to bed at 2:00 a.m.  It’s just how I’m wired.  Luckily my dear sweet husband is also a night owl and may be actually worse than I am when it comes to getting up early.  So imagine my sheer joy while reading my RE’s instructions on my medication and injections (take daily between 6 and 8 am).

“Wow” I said to my RE office nurse, “That is really early. I usually get up late and stay up late. Is this timing specific to monitoring at your office or can I adjust it to my schedule?”  Nope.  She explained it was necessary to take the medicine during their listed timeframe as they will be doing blood draws, tests and other monitoring that needs these medications in my system.  So an early riser I will be.  Yipes.

I woke up Saturday morning (a beautiful, warm and clear day) at 7:50 a.m.  This time was like the crack of dawn for me.  I didn’t get to bed until about 3:00 a.m.  I stumbled into the bathroom and popped my teeny tiny estrace pill.  Check.  Then I took out my antagonist injection package (cetrotide .25ml).  I took out the step-by-step instructions (with pictures) my husband stood over me to supervise/provide quality assurance.  We swabbed, we mixed, we prepped, we checked and then double-checked.  Heads were nodding, smug smiles were displayed in the mirror.  I held the primed needle full of medicine and expertly pin-cushioned straight into my pinched belly (3 fingers down, 3 fingers over).  As I was just about to push the stopper down, a huge air bubble floated out from freaking nowhere to the back of the syringe.

“What the?” I said.
"Where did that bubble come from?” the Hub said.  “We checked for bubbles and there were none.”
I agreed with him, but yet there was still a bubble.  I’m talking big here folks, like the size of peanut.

So I had to pull the needle out.  A tiny little dot on my belly started to weep blood.  We tapped, we wiggled, we tilted the syringe up and down to check until we were finally positive the bubble was truly gone.  A new alcohol wiped area on opposite side of my belly, stick in needle and VOILA. 

Big bubble returns.  Arrrrgggghhhhhhhhh! 

Needle was removed a second time, a new little red dot starts to appear. The husband is pretty freaking pissed off at the quality of this syringe.  So this time we sucked IN extra air, shook it up a bit, pressed all the air out again, got the micro-droplet of medicine at the top of the needle (again), but this time tipped the needle sideways to make sure that no, really bubbles aren’t present.  It seemed fine so I jabbed myself one last time and up popped a big bubble. 

So we carefully just did the injection anyway and assumed the syringe was a bit wonky. 
What. The. Hell. 
My Sunday and Monday injections went fine without a hitch, no problems with bubbles.

Other than that nonsense, I had a fab weekend. I got a lot of video editing work done.  I attended a potluck party where I was the super-awesome bartendress (I brought the fixins for virgin + regular versions of strawberry margarita and mango daiquiri).