Okay, life goes on... And, it's sometimes the "little" things that get your attention and/or remind you of this.

I had one of those "litte" events yesterday morning.

As some of you know, my hormones are self injected... (My doctor doesn't prescribe oral hormones for patients over 50... So, it's injection and/or the patch. And, as injections provide a lot more control over dose that's where I am.) As to self injection - that's anohter way she "enables" her patients. To be quite honest - way back when - I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it. I don't LIKE needles! And, the 1.5 inch needle looks quite long! (~1 inch/2.54 cm goes into the thigh) But, I found it surprisingly easy.

Some background - my first injection, my doc did... Two weeks later, I came back, and did my first injection (other thigh) under her observation... And, when I succeeded in doing so without correction (I studied my notes!)... I was "on my own" from then on. And, my dose has actually slowly decreased over time... At this point, it's less than 1/3 higher than most of her post-op patients. (I consider this a good thing.)

But, as I said, my dose has been dropping. This last time, she asked if I wanted to switch to a smaller syringe (since the ones I'd been using were way overkill) so I did... The new ones are the same size my father-in-law uses for his insulin...

For the "oops" above to make sense, I should describe the process a little. I start by putting a short 18 gauge needle on the syringe and pulling my dose out of the bottle with that large needle. Then, I swap for the 22.5 gauge (1.5 inch) needle for injection. My old syringes, the flared bases on the needles locked into quite tightly. The new needles are just on by friction.

In any event, yesterday morning was the first time with the new syringes. I swapped needles and all seemed fine... Until it came time to inject the hormones... Then "pop" there's oil all over my thumb, a needle sticking out of my thigh, and a syringe in my other hand. Yelp... popped right off... And, that needle looked kind funny (like the darts you see in movies - that they shoot through tubes and end up in folks necks... yeah, like that).

In any event, I cleaned up and started over... Making sure I was a wee bit more careful the second time, to make sure the outside of the syringe was clean/dry/free of oil... And all worked just fine.

When I told my wife about it later, using similar words to the above, she howled at the humor in the situation. :-)

On another front... One of my wife's colleagues (who she recently outed me to - who knew "HIM" before) was by for a visit, and the three of us went out to lunch. She later told my wife that she was surprised that as far as she could see it had just been three ladies out to lunch. There was no sign of a guy there! (This felt good to hear!) (Nice that my wife's colleagues are fully supportive - those that know - so far, as well!)

I'm still quite upbeat in life. I get "sir'd" occasionally still, which is disapointing. But, more often, specially with strangers, folks seem to take me as I am which IS a releaf considering how long it will be before I'm healthy enough for considering surgery.

Thanks for reading. Hope the event provided one or two of you a chuckle.

Annette

P.S. I'm intentionally leaving my dosing info vague, as it's not really important to the story. If someone really wants to know, they can send me a PM.