After trying a few internet based solutions that did not produce any results her neurologist prescribed her Avonex. This was a big deal in more ways than one. At the time Avonex is a once a week intramuscular shot. Since this was pretty early to + Avonex coming to the market there were no self-injectors and the medicine came in 2 parts. Part 1 was a small pill and part 2 was the vile to drop the pill into and then once dissolved you load the syringe.
At this time I have never given anyone a shot of anything and I knew nothing on how to do it. I have only received shots. As a part of the Avonex program they sent a registered nurse to our house to show us how to do the shot. I was very thankful they had this program because I probably would have screwed it up.
The nurse calls to make the day and time to come by. She requests we have 2 or 3 oranges available to practice shots on. I came to learn that oranges resemble human skin for this purpose. The nurse arrives on schedule and we gather around the our kitchen table. At this point neither one of us have seen Avonex inject materials. When she pulled out the needle and syringe I thought it was a joke, kind of a "ice breaker" to relieve stress we have about the shot. Nope. It WAS the shot. The needle looked as big as a Javelin to me. I had never received an intramuscular injection and had never seen a needle that size.
My first thought when she said this was the needle was "I can't do this". My mind was racing to find a solution. Maybe they could have a nurse come by once a week and administer it. Maybe there is a pill form coming soon. All I knew was that I didn't to take this Javalin sized need and stick it in my wife! Also adding to this equation was the following math problem: Jenn + any kind of shot = pass out or very sick to her stomach. All I could see in my head was sticking her with this needle, she passes out or possible gets sick and repeat once a week.
I did settle down a bit after practicing on the orange and the nurse directing me. This was the only lesson we were going to get. Next up, it's go time! We decided to do the shots on Friday evening right before going to bed. At the time Avonex had a side effect that produced "flu like symtoms" and we thought doing it at night you could hopefully sleep through the side effects.
The first shot night is upon us. I was very nervous. However, I knew that I could not show it or admit it. Who wants to get an intramuscular shot from a nervous and unconfident person? A word of advice for care partners: when given a tough task to help your MS fighter act as confident as possible. As the old adage says "fake it until you make it". Confidence will come and nerves will settle.
It took a few times of administering the Avonex shot to get comfortable but once I did it became very routine. If you get faced with having to do a shot (daily or weekly) breath easy knowing it won't take long to get used to it. Do make sure to move your inject spots or it will build up scar tissue very quickly and make the skin tough and more difficult to administer your shots.
Next post: The MS crutch.
Thanks for reading.
-Brent
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