Thursday, May 18, 2006

CHASING A NEEDLE

Last night, we went to Linda's house for her to give Rachel an HCG injection. I prepped the injection and just as Linda was about to stick Rachel, she stopped to say there wasn't any way we could use that needle. The doctor's office provided only one needle with the kit and it was the same needle that had to be stuck two different times through the rubber tip in the neck of the vials to draw up the medicine. (one vial with saline, the next with Novarel) In the process, the needle became a bit dull and certainly, you wouldn't want to be stuck with a dull needle!

Fortunately, Linda lives next door to the OB who referred us to the doctor doing the insemination, so she called him up to ask about getting a fresh needle from him. As luck would have it, he had plenty of sterile packaged needles on hand and we were able to get a new one to do the injection. Yay!

I don't know what would have happened if we had done the injection at home. Oh, wait, yes I do -- Rachel would have killed me. She's such a needle-phobe, you basically get one time to do it right with her and then it's all over. If I'd been stuck with that dull needle, one of us would have ended up hurting the other.

Lucky for us, Athens is a small town and we were able to get what we needed. One strange thing, though, the doctor's office gave us no instruction on what to do with the needles once we disposed of them. Fortunately, Linda works in a lab and said she'd dispose of them at work for us.

Anyway, I am just glad this part is all over and if for some reason we ever have to do this again, we'll be calling Linda!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello -- found you via, "Name that Mama" :)

I have to give one of our dogs allergy injections, and I just let the used syringes pile up in a bathroom cabinet for a few months. When I've got so many used ones that I can't get the cabinet door closed, I put them in a plastic bag (they all have their safety caps on them), and I take them back to the vet's office for disposal. Funny thing, though -- I always feel like the vet office staff look at me oddly when I ask them to dispose of the syringes. I wonder if I need to remind them that my dog has allergies, and that I'm not using them to hide evidence of a heroin addiction?!