A Breeze

Yesterday I was at the hospital learning how to give myself the Kineret injection. I'm really not nervous about needles and such, but I'll admit the idea of giving myself a shot in the stomach did give me a slight case of the creeps (the injections should be rotated between a few different areas in the body to lessen the skin irritation, the stomach being one site).

So, let's get that first shot I take into my belly! My nurse was so helpful and calming and before I knew it I'd stuck that sucker into my stomach and pumped my precious Kineret in. Next stop was back to my doctor's clinic upstairs to watch for any reaction. At first there was a wee bit of blotchy redness about 2 inches across, but that was gone within an hour. After that, nada. Two hours later, nada. THREE hours later, nada.

Shortly afterwards my doctor came in to review how I was feeling. Any concerns about an allergic reaction were calmed, I was doing just fine and able to go home.

Honestly, I think my doctor is far more nervous that I am about this. He's leaving today on two weeks vacation and wishes I would have waited until his return to start the Kineret. I'd explained that I really appreciated everyone moving heaven and earth to make this happen THIS week - emotionally I needed to be on more solid ground going into 2011. Feeling more hopeful about the year ahead. The last two holiday seasons were quite difficult, the first was a diagnosis of a leg tumour of (at the time) unknown cause and possibly cancerous, and then last year I was in the middle of weaning off prednisone (which took yet another four months to do successfully) and feeling quite horrible day in and day out.

This year I'm hopeful. I know it's way too early to predict anything after just one injection, but I feel very positive that this drug will improve upon my current quality of life (which to be perfectly blunt has really sucked the last few months).

So, yes - I did push my doctor into starting Kineret before his vacation. He's prepared me well with the pager number for the chief resident at the hospital (who's been prepped on what to do in case I get into trouble), we have antibiotics on hand in case of infection, drugs to help lessen the expected injection site reactions due to come along in a week or so. And I'm good with this. My doctor not so much, but he respects and understands how much I needed to do this now. Before a new year begins. How could I let the opportunity for three months of free access to the drug wait any longer than necessary after we've been hoping for this for so long?

For anyone considering Kineret as a treatment, let me say that the shot itself didn't hurt. It stung a bit for about fifteen minutes afterwards, but I'm pretty sure this was because the syringe was only out of the fridge for about ten minutes before the injection and I've heard that it's much easier if the solution has warmed for an hour or so.

So upstairs I go now for my husband to take his first stab (!) at this in my arm, he practiced this morning with an empty syringe on an orange. He's concerned about hurting me, but I know there's nobody who cares more about whether I feel pain - I know he'll do just fine.