I’ve officially been on T for two months (and a week!), and while I thought I’d done decent research, last week’s injection let me know that two months does not an expert make.
Two of my biggest fears came true last week: I jabbed myself in the finger with a needle, and I messed up my injection. The errors were as follows:
1) I jerked too hard at the needle cap, and ended up stabbing it into my middle finger, leaving a nasty slice and a weird, semi-circle bruise that hurt for a couple of days and made me feel like an idiot. I’d wasted a needle, and pain.
2) The nurse at PP was very nice, and gave me information and a basic rundown on injections, but never mentioned that stabbing myself elsewhere with the needle would hurt like fuck, or that weird things with my injections could happen, such as the testosterone oil leaking out.
Absolutely no one told me that an injection could leak out. I felt stupid and wasteful. The injections I’d yearned so much for, and I messed it up. In hindsight, I will be on T for the rest of my life and it is O.K. to have made a mistake and missed a dose, but at the time, between my throbbing finger and the wasted injection, I couldn’t believe it had actually happened, and my injection day wasn’t nearly as joyous as I had been used to. (Joyous being relative, considering injections and all.)
Sometimes leaks happen! After some panicked research, I realized I was going waaaaaay too fast with my injections, and this week I resolved to do a better, more informed job of my injection, which included Z-Tracking , aspiration, and massaging my injection spot, in addition to timing the injection itself for 3-5 seconds to depress the plunger, and leaving the needle in place for a full 10 seconds after.
Z-Tracking is a means to ‘close up’ the hole the needle leaves behind, and allows for the T (or whatever else) to be absorbed into the muscular tissue without seeping back out. It was super easy, and there’s plenty on YouTube, but I’m gonna link this for myself (and whoever may be reading!) for future reference.
https://www.healthline.com/health/z-track-injection#preparation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPp28ZGgobw&t=27s
Aspiration is pulling the plunger back on the syringe to see if a blood vessel was hit. If blood comes back into the needle, no bueno. I hit a blood vessel in Germany, and it was kind of unnerving and left my leg really sore for a few days at the injection site. I’m happy to avoid that wherever and whenever possible.
Massaging is just that! Massaging the injection site to help the injection along, etc.
While I know this isn’t news to some, and I really should have done more research beyond what the nurse told me, learning about everything has been pretty cool, and I feel empowered with my newfound knowledge, as well as more confident for future injections.
Anywho. I plan on posting more about hormonal changes / dysphoria soon enough, but wanted to catalog my success with the injection while it was all still fresh in my mind! And now I must sleep xD
dailybridgerton
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
ellievsbear
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
janainaart
annaxmalina
vaporwave
dededos
snowghoul
