Popping Pills and Shooting Up

TON - September 2012 VOL 5, NO 8 — October 12, 2012

I must admit that I am not a fan of medications. I had 4 beautiful children medication-free with midwives. I drink green tea to get rid of a cold. I eat chocolate to calm a headache. I microwave rice in a sock and place it on sore muscles. Perhaps that is why I resent (yes, I said it, “resent!”) that I have been sent home with 2 medications I must inject into myself twice a day for a total of 4 daily injections.

When I got sent home from the hospital after my fourth chemotherapy session with both my regular white bag packed full of pills plus new injections of blood thinners and stem cell stimulators (I am preparing for a stem cell transplant), I felt nervous. Certainly, since the start of my illness I have been charged with taking pills at home. If I had to rank myself on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a patient who constantly forgets to take his/her medicine and 10 being the highly conscientious patient who never misses medicine time while following all the directions about eating, drinking, and driving exactly, I would place myself around a 7 or 8. Honestly, I don’t forget to take the medicine; sometimes, probably for some psychological reason, I resist taking it. That means, if the pharmacist or nurse wrote on my medicine sheet to take a pill (or series of them) every day at 9:00 in the morning, some days I may take it at 11:00, even if the bottle is sitting right in front of me for those extra 2 hours. Furthermore, if the bottle says not to eat for a half hour after taking the pill, I often wait only 20 minutes. I cannot explain my behavior. I know I am only hurting myself. Nonetheless, I just do it that way, sometimes.

The injections, which I had been taught to give myself in the hospital, presented an entirely new challenge. First of all, I have a deep-seated fear of needles. When the nurse first told me I would need to inject myself, I started to cry and sweat. She tried to calm me by telling me the needle was very small. That did nothing. She brought me the fake skin to place on my belly to practice injecting myself without actually doing it. The doctor even came in to tell me that because of the size of the needle, even if I jammed the injection into myself, I would not hit a vital organ. Then, after about a hundred practice runs, the nurse watched as I cleaned off my own skin with an alcohol wipe, pinched the skin 2 inches from my belly button, counted “1-2-3” and stuck the needle into my virgin belly skin.

Yet, this self-injection bothers me not only because of my fear of needles, but also because I honestly think I should not have to do it. I think the hospital should either do the injections so as not to force me into this masochistic routine morning and afternoon, or give me another pill that I can take relatively on time every day. Perhaps some people prefer to be able to self-inject at home instead of having to go back to the hospital, but I do not fall into that category. I find it very hard to understand how—with all the advances in medicine, with all the brilliant minds working on hard-core issues such as finding cures for cancer, with all the nurses who spend years in school, and with all the specialized fields within pharmacology—I am still required to “shoot up” in my own bathroom as part of my treatment.

Perhaps I should feel lucky that I have access to medical care (and I do). Perhaps I should stop whining and think of all the millions of people with diabetes who have to inject themselves every day for the rest of their lives (and I do). Perhaps I should think of all those who have passed away from my illness and be thankful I have the opportunity to receive medications that may save me (and I do/am). Perhaps I should somehow look on the bright side and breathe a sigh of relief that at least the injections are not another pill I need to remember to take (unfortunately, I cannot). The truth of the matter is, that while I am pretty comfortable with popping pills, I am not at all comfortable with shooting up in my bathroom even after a month of doing so. Can someone please invent something that makes it unnecessary while still maintaining the same level of care?

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