Queer Stuff

Klein Orientation Grid Time

What I've Been Told About HRT Self-Injection

Standard disclaimer from my health pages: I am not a doctor, nor am I your doctor. This is civillian-to-civillian communication.

My doctor said that it's best to draw up the medication into the syringe using a larger gauge of needle. It's not impossible to do so with a smaller gauge, but it is slower. So don't be scared by the big needles if they give you one--it's likely you'll get another that's a much smaller gauge.

A pharmacy tech at my hospital said that if doing an intramuscular injection, aim for big muscles. This includes the gluteus medius, gluteus maximus, the deltoid, and the muscles of the thigh. He preferred that I do the gluteus medius, as there's slightly more risk of hitting arteries/nerves the closer you get to the gluteus maximus. The needle needs to be at 90 degrees. Avoid bubbles. The vial--if you have a 10-dose vial--can keep for 28 days after puncture. If it's a single-dose vial, throw out after puncture.

I then got formal injection training from a nurse. The process they showed me was as such:

1. Wash hands
2. Pop off the top of the vial
3. Rub it with a 70% alcohol swab for a few seconds, then allow to dry, setting it on a flat surface
4. While allowing to dry, take a separate alcohol swab, locate injection site, and rub the shit out of it with the swab
5. Screw on the drawing needle to the syringe, careful to screw it tight. Try not to touch the parts where the syringe and needle connect (not the end of the world if you do, though)
6. Once screwed on, uncap the needle used to draw up and stick it in the vial
7. Hold the vial up to the light with one hand and hold onto the syringe with the other
8. Making sure that the tip of the needle is in the fluid, draw up the medication. I overshoot it by a little bit!
9. Check for bubbles. You can flick them out or re-draw
10. If no bubbles are present (there's usually a big one right at the top of the syringe, don't worry about that one), slide the vial off the needle and set it down
11. If your needle has a safety guard, tap it over the needle against a table
12. Unscrew the drawing needle
13. Screw on the injection needle, making sure as before that it's tight
14. Uncap the needle
15. Prime the needle, which means pushing out a tiny bit of the medication until it beads at the needle tip
16. Check the bevel. The bevel is the slanty edge of the needle. Make sure that wherever you're injecting, the bevel is downward. It won't kill you if you don't do it, it just hurts a little more.
17. Relax the area you're going to inject
18. Position the needle at a 90 degree angle to the injection site
19. Push in the needle. Speed is up to you.
20. [OPTIONAL BUT I DO IT]Pull up on the syringe a little bit. This is called aspiration. If blood wells up in the syringe, pull out the needle and start from step 5
21. If you only pull up air (it'll look like little bubbles) or choose not to aspirate, push down on the syringe plunger, ideally using the same hand you pushed it in with. Speed is up to you.
22. Pull out the needle
23. Cap the needle. 
24. Apply a band-aid to the site. You did it!

I was able to draw up with a 25-gauge needle, but only once I drew up the medication very slowly. I would've used the 18-gauge they gave me to draw up, but VanishPoint syringes don't have exchangeable needles! >:( They also automatically retract when you push the plunger all the way down, so I had to try a couple times with a new syringe. They apologized profusely and agreed to send me the correct syringes/needles, so I would watch out for that.

Gender Song

Black Room Boy by Above & Beyond isn't my favorite song, but it is the song that best describes me and my relationship to gender and other people. I first heard this shortly after it came out, as a baby 11-year-old who'd been on the Internet for as long as I could work a mouse. This song speaks to escapism. You can be yourself or someone else. Whatever! The level of possibility is only matched by the level of fragility. You can just log off and never be seen again, with no one calling or coming to your house for answers. Before the Internet, you'd have to move to another continent. This appealed to baby me, trapped in place. It still appeals to me, who wants to keep every part of my gender and relationships a secret. If it's all secrets, you can control how each person sees you, and lose nothing if that aspect of yourself changes. No knocks on your door, no missed calls. I--and many other trans people--often wish I could go be by myself for a few years while this transition works itself out, and emerge fully-formed. Unfortunately, rent is too high for anything like that lol