...Go!

Follistim injection #1: ACCOMPLISHED!

Yeah, Follistim. The pharmacy we went to (the one in the same building as our clinic) offers discounted rates on some fertility meds to patients whose insurance plans do not cover those drugs. Like, um, me. But apparently Gonal-F is not on the discount list, so they had to give me Follistim. Of course, the phamacist couldn't just make the switch; she had to get a new prescription from one of my nurses. And of course I didn't learn any of this until I was actually at the pharmacy. After work. At about 5:05 PM. And do you know whose clinic closes at 5:00 and immediately stops taking phone calls?

So the pharmacist had me run upstairs to see if I could catch either nurse in person, but the doors to the clinic office were securely locked, and my insistent raps at the door went unanswered. The kind, resourceful pharmacist then called the clinic again (getting forwarded to the answering service) and asked for a call back from the doctor on call. (Did I really just use the word "call" three times in that sentence?) Long story short: twenty-five minutes later, I had my prescription changed, but to a pen I hadn't been trained on. I'm a smart girl, and I can read, so I figured it out, but here are my two remaining questions:

(1) Do I actually need to put a new needle on each time? Because, if so, I'm going to need to get more of those - they only gave me enough for one per shot if each shot is at least 75 units. I can't recap the pen with the needle (and outer protective needle cover) still attached, but I figure that for just putting it back into tis carrying case and into the fridge, that's ok.

(2) Am I supposed to prime this thing or not? And if so, do I do it with every new needle, or only evey new vial? The glossy, printed instructions that came with the meds (from the pharma company) say to dial one click every time you put on a new needle, and depress until you see a droplet at the tip. That's...going to add up to a lot of wasted medication, won't it? The pharmacist said, "no need to prime." The pdf instructions from my clinic's website do not mention priming. The Injections Lesson Nurse told us that the only differences between Follistim and Gonal-F are that with Follistim you have to put in the cartridges, and you do not have to prime with each new needle. I don't know who to believe, but DAMMIT I do not want to waste any of this medication, and I also do not want to give myself too little of it, so...what do I do?

Oh, one more question:

(3) Does anyone out there know how much these vials are overfilled by?

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It seems that I've lost my HSG buddy, but for a terrific reason. Congrats EJW!

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...and a few minutes after the injection, I understood why you guys call this stiff FolliSting.