Just another day, another injection

So the total lack of excitement today made it just another day.  Just one more day in a long string of days.  Work, house work, food prep, an injection and then sleep.  Well here you go yesterday's site and today's injection. Yeah!

Yesterday's injection site on my thigh.  No lingering reaction but the itchiness, of course that may change.

My hip before the injection.

My hip directly after the injection.

My hip 20 minutes after the injection. 

How I do it

I was told by the Shared Solutions nurse to start at a 6 with the Autoinject 2 device.  I didn't think about it at the time but, so, I start at a 6, am I supposed to stay there and consult with my neuro in 2 months when I see him again if 6 isn't working?  This Shared Solutions is silly and stupid.  I really don't want them calling me monthly to see how I am doing, especially since they always call in the middle of the working day.  I would rather have the doctor check on my progress weekly for the first month, then monthly for the first 6 months. But the great American Medical Institute has come up with this"Shared Solution" instead. UGH.  I guess to give you some idea I started in my right arm because I am left handed.  So my rotation goes right arm, left arm, tummy, right leg, left leg, left butt, right butt, and repeat.  The first injection I gave myself literally did not hurt, I didn't even feel it.  Then it started to sting about 2 minutes later.  But that just lasted a minute or two and no welt, no itching, no nothing.  I thought I can do this, but a month later I have started having the reactions and I wasn't sure if they were normal or not.  I am posting what all the reactions look like and how I am going about determining the right depth for my rotation. Since today is Monday I will be injecting my left thigh.  I have taken some not very good pics of the injection sites from last week.

This is my right thigh.  This injection site is 8 days old.  It is right above my knee the whole top of my right thigh was still bruised last week from the two previous weeks, that is why I did this one so low.  It doesn't itch anymore but it still looks like I have a rash.
  If you look at the top left there is a red line closer to my knee.  That is a dent from the shot, it is the first time I have ever given myself a shot there and after the rash went away there was a dent, bye bye fat.

This is my left thigh.  This is the injection site from two weeks ago, and you can kind see closer to the knee the last of the bruising healing from 3 weeks ago.  This one doesn't itch either, but someone looking at my thighs might think I went frolicing in posion ivy.

This is my abdonmen. This reaction still itches, it is 3 days old.

This is my right thigh from yesterday.  Itchy, Itchy.  Ugh the worst part about the legs is your pants rub against them and make them worse.

This is my fat white left thigh.  I drew a square on it so you can see how the reaction changes over time.  This is pre shot for today.

This is right after giving myself my shot.  You can see the little red dot and the circle impression from the Autoinjector.

This is 20 minutes after giving myself the Copaxone shot.  It looks and feels like a misquito and bee stung me in the same place.  And you can kind of see the 4 week old bruise thatis almost gone.  I had forgotten about it bruising there until I looked at the picture.

The End of the Beginning

I woke up one cold-ish Saturday in December and couldn't feel my legs.  Now when I say I couldn't feel my legs that is not entirely accurate, I had no light touch feeling on my legs and they kind of felt like they had fallen asleep.Oh, nothing to worry about I thought, I had just pinched a nerve my legs still worked after all.  I already had a chiropractors appointment set for Tuesday, it would be okay.  And anyway my mom was freaking out about this spot on her leg that looked like she had been picking at a hair follicle that turned into a zit, after 5 hours of her bemoaning her state of discomfort off to the emergency room we went my problem never even coming up in conversation(she had SARS btw).  Well Tuesday came and went and the chiropractor had a work out on me and sent me on my way.  Wednesday saw no improvement so I went back to the chiropractor on Thursday...and Friday...and Saturday...and Monday.  Ok this is getting ridiculous so on Tuesday I asked "Shouldn't I be seeing some improvement by now?", well it can take a while, so again on Wednesday and Friday.  By Saturday I couldn't take it anymore and I thought it was getting worse moving up my torso, so I drove myself to the ER...They told me well your not having a stroke so go see your regular doctor on Monday...What?!?! that's it, that's all your going to do.  Yep, your insurance won't pay for any non preapproved testing unless its a life threatening emergency.  Monday came and I was at the doctor's office on a walk in basis, first person in the door, The doctor said it could be a couple of things but it was not time to worry...yet.  He ordered an MRI at 4:30 the next morning. Ugh I am sooo Not A Morning Person, but I went.  They got me in this tube and told me to hold still....then the nurse came over the intercom and said she was done, I about jumped out of my skin I had fallen asleep in the MRI machine and she had startled me awake.  It is never a good thing when the Doctor's office calls less then 6 hours after an MRI.  He said it looks like MS, lets get you into a neurologist.  This was about 4 days before Christmas but amazingly the neuro could get me in 3 days after Christmas. He ordered a whole new round of MRIs cause he wanted them with contrast and wanted me to have 5 dose of Solumedrol in IV.  I told him nope not happening I guess I am just gonna die then, you are NOT STICKING ME 7 TIMES WITH AN IV NOT HAPPENING.  I have rolling veins they always miss and as a result I am terrified of needles so I don't care what the treatment is if you are planning on sticking me with a needle I would rather die.  The neruo got me calmed back down and said OK how about a compromise, we can give you a pic line one stick and they do all the blood tests, MRI contrast and IV drips with that, and we can give you anti anxiety meds so you won't even realize they are giving you the pic line.  OK that sounded fair.  Well it was at the time but omg the trouble with them pulling blood for the test and the Super Bad reactions I had to the IV meds, I got two days on the Solumedrol and two days off then two more days of Dextamethasone(?) same reaction on both I became a sunburned looking Raging lunatic. I was so sick from the IVs over New Year's I just wanted to die.  After finally getting the blood tests back which the had to do 3 times total the Neuro said I had a CIS.  CIS is a clinically isolated syndrome, you can have one and then that is all it is, but my neuro told me 65% of people who have one will have another and then it becomes MS, but you can take one of these meds and it will reduce the risk of having another one in 3 years to 25%.  As a result of the "ardent" (haha) work of my doctors they gave me a choice: Do nothing and see what happens, or give your self a shot depending on the type of medicine you choose...there are three, will determine on how often you take them.  Hmm...I was really leaning towards do nothing, again I am a needlephob, but both of my aunts on my dad's side have MS so I didn't think that was a viable option.  After listening to the doc and reading all the medicine's different paraphernalia, I chose Copaxone.  The thing that got me is their information gives you a very brief description of the site reactions but no pictures.  You have to wait like a month to get the insurance to work out who is going to send you this medication before you start taking it so you look everywhere trying to get the Good, Bad and Ugly.  So here I am a month on Copaxone and I still have questions about what is normal and what is not.  So I wanted to start blogging about it to maybe help others to see the real truth not just the worst case scenario you generally find on the web.