Uncomfortable experience (application): A few years ago, I got to hang out with nurses for half a day and watch them do injection after injection of needles to do blood draws and shots to WILLING people at a local clinic. As I cannot stand needles, this was a queasy experience for me, but indeed: exposure therapy is pretty valid. At least I walked away from that day with a good ability to watch injections happen, or worse: see blood fill up a tube.
This uncomfortable experience was a good primer for another experience I just did: egg freezing. Funny, they don’t show the 20+ injection needles you’re going to need in the brochure nor the red little “sharps container bio hazard” box you’re also going to tote around like a lunch box from hell. My fault for not asking more questions at the start of this absurd and equally miraculous ordeal. That is pretty amazing-at least in America and if you have an employer who pays or subsidizes it (yay for BAM), you can pluck out your eggs, even match them with sperm if you’d like (I did half and half), and put them on ice until you randomly decide when, if ever, you want to defrost them. That is utterly unbelievable.
But back to the needles: As a sales strategy, I’d bet, the number of injections you’re going to do to yourself over a 7 to 10 day period is not overstated. The first question my doctor said to me upon seeing me in person for the first time (we did a Zoom meeting before after we knew I was a “very good” candidate for egg freezing), was, “so, did you watch the videos?” There are indeed several videos somewhere on my online portal that show you how to prep, mix, and inject each kind of injection. Had I watched the 60 or so total minutes for all of the videos where they show you’re going to do up to three shots a day to your stomach, some of which take a minute or so to fully deploy, I’m not sure I would have been in the room with that plastic sheet thing on ready to go. But there I was, and like all uncomfortable experiences, there is a clear “well, I’m here” moment that pushes you over the edge to just get on with it.
The first night, Cliff was ready to help, but since he was making dinner, I told him just to watch me so I didn’t faint or do something stupid like impale the seat cushion and squirt out the expensive egg elixir. This was the other unbelievable part: there is quite the assumption made that you’ll go home with your drug pile worth thousands of dollars and just get to the skin popping with your 1.5 inch needles like a seasoned junkie. This experience did solidify how horribly powerful addiction must be to endure injections to yourself on the regular.
Helpfully, you have to pinch a little chunk of your stomach for the injection to go in, and somehow, this mentally gave me some peace of mind knowing I was going to hit some layer of fat with the needle and not some vital organ that would then bleed out. To get a better chunk, I slouched over and just went for it. Some of the drugs give a little burning sensation but most actually aren’t more than a pinch once you get the sucker of a needle in yourself. Every injection was like a little victory. Oddly, I kinda liked doing the prep work for the little syringes eventually. Something is satisfying about getting all the little air bubbles out by tap, tap, tapping them away. That’s about all I liked.
During the whole injection period, a lot was going on. One person asked me, “are you ready for (insert very tough convo)?” I said, “I already injected myself with three needles today. What else you got.” Weird how injections give you an invincible perspective.