The Lovenox injections are not super awesome but they're not totally terrible, either. The needle is super tiny and it needs to be injected into the subcutaneous layer on my abdomen. J has done the injection for me 3 days and this morning I did it myself. The stuff burns going in and then burns for about 5 minutes afterward. I've read that bruising is normal... but still getting used to seeing this on my body when I look in the mirror:
This is from the Day 2 injection, and none of the others have been nearly that bad. Luckily, it looks worse than it feels. The little red spot at the top is where the needle went in.
The intralipid infusion was definitely not a great way to spend a day. They send a nurse to our house, and she was very nice and professional. It took a while to find a vein, apparently I was a little bit dehydrated. So that made it a little bit painful to place the needle and she had to stick me multiple times. We finally got it in around my left elbow, and then it takes about 3 hours for it to infuse. I'm hooked up to a pump during the infusion, which I can carry around with me. Since it was right at my elbow I couldn't really move my arm very much, so I pretty much spent the whole time on the couch. This was my view:
It went alright except that my blood pressure (which is on the low side to begin with) dropped pretty low about 2 hours in, to the point where I was having a hard time staying awake. I was glad when it was over.
J is doing a great job of taking care of me through all of this. We are really hoping that this cycle is successful so that we don't have to start all of this over next month... but we also realize that that might be what happens, and we will deal with it as it comes.
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