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so exciting! If you’re doing injections, I always recommend people to avoid my mistake and have your syringes and supplies before your appointment - I walked out of the appointment with a prescription and filled it the same day, but the pharmacy was clueless about the needles and syringes I needed, and I ended up having to wait until I managed to get my hands on the right needles and syringes to do my first injection.
Thanks for the advice! I’m a bit freaked out about the injections tbh, but I’m sure I can get over it.
I have moderate to severe needle phobia, so I completely understand that. I recommend doing subcutaneous injections - there are times when, if I do the jab right, I literally feel no pain (not that pain is necessarily the biggest psychological hurdle, but hopefully it’s comforting anyway).
The injection needle I use is 1/2 inch and 27 gauge (the grey ones), and to prevent coring the vial (basically permanently damaging the rubber you puncture and exposing the vial to contamination) I use 21G 1 inch needles (the green ones) to draw with (instead of the typical 18G pink needles).
I have a whole list of strategies to help with needle phobia and starting off with injections, if you want I can add those here!
EDIT: turns out I made a post with the tips a while back, you can find them here:
https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/27953271
Let me know if you have any questions!
Hey thank you so much sister. I just realised I had already read your injection guide with great interest and saved it because I knew I would have to come back to it. Thanks for posting, I’m sure it’s helping a bunch of folks.
Have you ever used an auto injector? I’m kindof curious about them but I haven’t heard many women talk about them in here. Maybe I should make a post to ask about it.
I’ve never used an auto-injector. When I first started researching how to do injections and dealing with needle phobia, it didn’t come up. When I learned later about auto-injectors I wasn’t sure if they would actually work.
Personally, having more control over the jab is important to me. Psychologically the idea of the auto-injector freaks me out a little. Though I admit, I do think it would make the hardest part, actually jabbing the needle in, much easier mentally. Pressing a button is easier than actually controlling the jab (and also, it avoids having to finesse learning how to walk that tight-rope between dissociating enough that you can do the jab, and not dissociating so much that you can’t coordinate the jab well; when I chicken out my jab is slower and more painful, so a device could really help).
Searching more, I found this thread on auto-injectors: https://old.reddit.com/r/ask_transgender/comments/e52zbc/for_anyone_with_fear_of_self_injections_this/
Looks like they do exist, but are somewhat expensive. Also looks like my initial skepticism about auto-injectors not being able to plunge the thick oil in is irrelevant because the injector just jabs the needle, but then you have to manually plunge the medication in.
It might be a useful tool for people like us, but since it’s so expensive and they are hard to get, I’ll just assume it’s out of reach for most people. I think this might be why it’s not really talked about - it’s just not common for various reasons.
That said, if you do get your hands on an auto-injector, I would be curious to hear about your experiences!
I really appreciate all the info sharing, i’ll be sure to let you know if i go the auto-injector route.