LET THE SHOTS BEGIN

Dave, a man who until recently took no medications at all, not even a multivitamin, now has to have a spreadsheet of all his meds so he won't forget to take them on the right days at the right times.  (This demonstrates a difference in how the two of us go about things.  I suggested he get 7 baggies, label them Sunday through Saturday and put all the meds and shots he needs for a day in each baggy, as sometimes he has 3 shots a day and 4 different medications.  Not his style.  He set up a spreadsheet so he can check things off as he pulls meds, vials, hypodermic needles, alcohol pads, etc. from the myriad of boxes in the bathroom.)  Dave is, and always will be, an engineer.  I don't know what you would call me.  A jackass of all trades, maybe.

We met with Rosemary on Monday, who  told us Dave's liver and blood numbers were great. Then we saw one of the chemo nurses, who was going to teach us how to do the injections for Intron.  She started with a demonstration on how to open the sterile hypodermic needle. We almost fell over when we saw how big the needle was.  Thankfully, it is used only to draw the right amount of Intron out of the little vial.  Then Dave replaces that needle with another smaller (!) sterile needle to inject himself in his stomach.  He will be getting 20 units of Intron three times a week for 48 weeks.  He is also getting heparin shots in the morning and evening every day, so as I noted earlier, he is injecting himself 3 times a day on Mon-Wed-Fri.  The heparin shots should end in a month.

Sandy and I had opthamologist appointments in the afternoon, so we picked her up and the three of us went to lunch then to the eye doc.  At the end of the visit, Dave was beginning to feel the effects of the Intron.  He took Sandy back to her cottage and came straight home.  He felt chills, as he always did when getting the interferon intravenously, and by the evening he had a fever.  He was feeling lousy in general, until the fever broke about midnight.

His plan is to take the Intron shots in the evenings from now on and hopefully the first 12 hours of not feeling well will be mostly gone by the next day.

Dave has another appointment Monday.  If his numbers stay in the good range for the next 3 weeks, he will be able to switch from weekly to monthly appointments.

Now for a few pictures  - if you want to see them.  I put them at the bottom of this post so you don't have to look.  :-)

The heparin hypodermic

The injection

Disposal in the sharps box

Feeling no pain