When the second exacerbation occurred in ’97, my neurologist wrote the prescription for my first CRAB MonSter treatment. Those of you in the know, understand the acronym CRAB stands for Copaxone, Rebif, Avonex, Betaseron and my Neurologist prescribed Avonex. The idea of a weekly injection was inconvenient because I was determined to fight this MonSter on my own, but because of the administration of the drug and its side-effects, it became a couple’s issue. Avonex was designed as an intramuscular injection, therefore, the needle was longer and thicker for going directly into the muscle.
Among the onset of symptoms with the exacerbation, was a slight tremor. I was right-handed and of course, this tremor affected only my right hand. The tremor-like symptom has forced me over the years to become ambidextrous, but at the time, doing the injection for myself was not an option. The tremor did not play nice, nor did it allow me to accurately inject and by default, my husband’s steady hand made more sense for completing the weekly ritual. Avonex resources were “dialed-in” and provided us with drug prep training and administration training so that both of us were entirely comfortable with the whole Avonex process before we were ready to inject on our own.
God bless my husband for embracing the training and practicing the process until he was ready to inject that (what appeared to me at the time was a 14 inch) needle. Realistically, it was only a couple inches long, but injecting something into a loved-one that would ultimately cause pain was very different than going into the doctor’s office for a routine, but somewhat impersonal flu-shot, for example. Because of the tremor, I had to resign myself to allowing my husband to be my care-partner, which was something I have embraced over the years, but at the time, felt as though my independence was being ripped away from me, without my permission and happened way too early since I was only 23 years old.
The first couple of solo injections were supervised to ensure nothing was overlooked. In 15 years of medications, praise God that there has not been even a hiccup. I switched from Avonex in Spring of ’01, but the ritual went like this: we washed our hands, my husband swabbed the vial of liquid with alcohol, extracted the liquid with the syringe and injected it into the other vial to dissolve the pill-like substance of Avonex from its original form, I bared one of my hips in the mirror, marked a spot with a crescent-like nail imprint, cleaned the spot with alcohol, waited for the alcohol to dry and my mind greatly increased the length of the needle and syringe. Truthfully, it was not excessively long when he injected the Avonex.
With the knowledge that Avonex was an interferon drug and was prone to offer flu-like symptoms, we determined that the injection should be Friday night so that I might sleep through the flu-like side-effects and wake Saturday morning, ready to tackle the remainder of the weekend with whatever we had planned. But God, in his desire to make me slow down said, “Not so Fast, Missy.” The lesson was:
The whole thing was the first of many lessons over the years that God used to teach me to recognize that I must be flexible, for myself as well as for family and friends. The flu-like symptoms rendered me useless for several hours. In the beginning, I fought the symptoms, but in my stubbornness, I made myself worse for not allowing myself to take the much-needed rest that God was trying to show me was mandatory in order for me to improve. It took a few years, but the situation was the beginning of many lessons in the realization that nothing I did would ever control the outcome of anything, especially that of my MS’s debilitating status.
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