My Syringes came in via mail today and so I did my first injection right away. Since Im doing Monotherapy I started with 5mg to see where it leads me. This was also the first time injecting myself with anything. It was kinda scary, but next time it will be way easier.
I’ve been self-administering medications subcutaneously for over 4 years, with a prescription. It’s genuinely really hard to fuck up a subcutaneous injection,and watching a single video on how to do it (or reading a nurse’s guide lime I did) is more than enough to understand it. Subcutaneous injection is an injection into the fat layer, so it does not involve hitting a vein or muscle. The most common points of administration are the abdomen and the thighs. Here are the steps, for reference:
I know that’s a lot of steps, but I promise the process is really simple and intuitive after you’ve done it once. I went into an extreme amount of detail.
Do you write SOPs for work or something?
No, I just have a natural tendency to be incredibly verbose and specific, and this is a process I’ve been doing for years now, so I’m hyperaware of how to do it
I know this is old, but I remembered this comment today and figured I’d ask since you seem to have some idea what you’re doing. How exactly do you prevent medication from leaking out after injection? I’m injecting (or trying to inject) 1ml estradiol valerate, and I’ve tried leaving the needle in for up to 30s, holding the skin pinched the entire time the needle is inserted, injecting faster or slower, but seemingly every combination I try results in multiple large drops leaking back out within a few seconds of removing the needle. Like, enough that it looks like nearly half of the fluid is coming back out. Is this something you’ve ever experienced?
My Estradiol Cypionate is 40mg/ml, so I only have to use 0.05mL. 1mL is a large injection, and I’d say that much fluid would likely require intramuscular injection. What concentration is your EV? Are you doing monotherapy, or are you on an anti-androgen? What length needle are you using? Are you releasing the pinch after inserting the needle and before depressing the plunger? Have you tried injecting at a 90° angle for a deeper depot? Those are the places I’d start. If you’re on an anti-androgen, you should be able to lower your dose to something closer to standard cisgender female estradiol levels.
I’m assuming based on your dosage that you’re doing monotherapy with a 5mg/mL EV vial, which would make subcutaneous injections difficult. Is this DIY? Because I’d choose to get something of a higher concentration if it’s DIY monotherapy, as that would solve the problem outright. I’m not gonna send any links, but if you happen to stumble across a company called Open Gate Labs, they may solve your problem *wink*. If you’re going off a prescription though, volumes that high are often injected intramuscularly. If you’re prescribed, I’d bring this up with your doctor.
I’ve also been injecting a different medication—adalimumab—for 4 and a half years now, and that comes in at only 0.4mL. Very rarely I’ll have a single drop come out, which is a negligible amount, but that uses an autoinjector, so I have very little control there. I’m gonna get my prescription switched to pre-filled syringes at some point if I can because I honestly hate the autoinjector. My point is, however, that I’ve never had to deal with a volume that large while injecting. Even my loading dose for adalimumab was 2 double concentration 0.4mL syringes injected into different spots, so I was still only dealing with 0.4mL depots.
You could always try posting in the DIY HRT community on Blåhaj, and maybe you’ll come across others who are injecting volumes that large that could help more.
Thanks so much for the reply! I seem to have forgotten about the decimal point, I meant to write 0.1ml (the syringes I use have markings in 10ths of a milliliter, so I just fill it up to the “1” mark and forget what unit I’m working with…). I’m injecting Ev @ 40mg/mL using ½inch, 26 gauge subq insulin needles, and yes I’m doing DIY monotherapy. I’ve tried releasing the pinch both before and after depressing the plunger, to no avail.
I haven’t tried injecting at a 90° angle, I’ll give that a try for my next injection tomorrow and see how it goes! (assuming I can find enough fat on my body to do that… I am very underweight)
The Blåhaj DIY community is new to me, I will definitely try asking there if my experiment tomorrow fails. Thanks again!
For me, the area that works best is a ring around my belly button from 1"-3" away from the belly button. If you’re underweight, you should ideally be using a 45° angle, as you likely aren’t going to have the fat depth to comfortably do 90° with a 1/2" needle. You only need to keep the needle in for about 4 seconds after bottoming out the plunger; any longer is superfluous (and probably quite uncomfortable). I will say that while I highly doubt it’s relevant, I use 30G 1/2" needles and have never gotten any drainage from my E shots while following the steps I outlined in my original comment. But I’m also at a mid-healthy range weight, and don’t have trouble finding a fat pocket to inject into. I will warn you that thighs will likely have less fat, if you were injecting there. And I just remembered, depressing the plunger slowly may help (like over the course of 3-4 seconds), so if you were going fast before, then that may be something to try! Otherwise, I’d ask on the DIY community for advice, as I’ve never encountered this problem myself. My only further advice if nothing I’ve recommended works is to try intramuscular. It’s a very loose feeling with it being a deeper injection that it would be less likely to leak out; I don’t know if that holds up in reality.
And I feel like it goes without saying, but I may as well offer the advice: make sure the needle is fully inserted, and not partially inserted, because that could most certainly cause problems.