First day of stims

Well, I survived getting up early to give myself my first injection of this cycle. I didn't even go back to bed right after the shot, either. It means I didn't do my meditation this morning, but I'm thinking that I might be better off doing it before bed anyway. It might help me relax and sleep better too.

I must say that I had to psych myself up a bit for the IM injection in a way I never had to with the SQ shots. It's such a tiny needle (and such a big target!) that I hardly felt it at all, but it was disconcerting nonetheless. I remembered that the Menopur did sting a bit the last time I used it, so I wasn't sure what to expect with doing it IM. It really wasn't bad at all--in fact I think the stinging was less than what I remember from doing them in my belly last time. I'm just hopeful that the protocol change to doing everything IM will pay off!

I had to do my first semi-public injection tonight, too. I say semi-public because I was teaching a class for other ER nurses on our new computer upgrade. It just so happened that the three nurses in my class are all familiar with stims--1 did an egg donation when she was younger, another is in the midst of an egg donation cycle, and the other has done IVF (though nobody else at work knows about that). I had one of my co-workers give me the Gonal-F shot tonight in my right arm, a place that will be a bit tougher to do by myself. I'm trying to rotate which sites I use so any one particular site doesn't get overused and sore.

So far, I haven't had any side effects from the stims. I think the dexamethasone was interfering with my sleep since I had been taking it at night. I was having trouble sleeping and was having hot flashes during the night. Both of these are common side effects of steroids, so I changed today to taking it after lunch. Hopefully that (and the meditation) will help with the sleep issue.