Progesterone in Oil, PIO. Hate is a mild word for how I feel about PIO. Jabbing myself with needles is horrible in general, but PIO is a special kind of hell, so I’m going to bitch about it. A lot.
This is the needle I used for my low dose hcg injections (in the stomach, subcutaneous). lip balm and bobby pin for scale, mostly because they were the most handy things I could find. For technical reference it is a 1/2 inch 29 gauge needle.
This is my PIO needle.
Here’s a comparison so you can better understand the hugeness of the PIO needle. This son-of-a-bitch is a 1 1/2 inch 22 gauge needle. To top it off, it’s intramuscular. Which means, you guessed it, the medication gets injected into my muscle. I’m generally very open about all this crap, but right now I am not open enough to post a picture of my injection sites for everyone to see. The injections happen in the upper outer quadrant of my butt. Think of that sweet spot right between ass cheek and love handle. Also think of the way that that muscle tightens when you twist your torso. You try looking at your ass and relaxing the muscle at the same time (not so possible). Relaxing the muscle is supposed to help with the pain factor, but I can’t completely relax it when doing this shit myself.
The injection part sucks. My first PIO injection Casey was there, but I did the injection myself. This may sound mean, but I needed to know I could do it alone. I had a full two weeks of PIO injections alone. My brain does everything it can to have me not jam the huge needle all the way into myself. Once the gigantic needle is in my ass the plunger needs to be pulled back to make sure that I didn’t hit a blood vessel. If no blood shows up in the syringe it’s injection time. Progesterone in oil is, well, in oil. Which means it’s thick, and needs to be injected slowly. After all of the medication is injected the needle gets pulled out, and I hold pressure on the poke mark for a couple minutes to stop the minor bleeding and bit of oil oozing out. Thirty minutes later I have to apply a heating pad. This helps the oil thin out and distribute better into my muscle. The thirty minutes is to give the needle hole some time to close, and prevents all of the medication from being drawn out. Please keep in mind that I have to use the heating pad, and temperatures have been in the 90s.
So these injections range from mildly unpleasant to excruciating. I wish I knew what magic spot I hit that makes it just unpleasant, but I haven’t quite figured it out. Sometimes the poke is the worst part. Other times, there’s the poke. Then the stinging of feeling the needle in me. Then the pain of pulling back the plunger. Then the ache of injection the medication. Then the soreness of putting pressure on it.
I have had multiple anxiety attacks associated with PIO. Which sucks. Nothing is worse than having to give yourself a gigantic shot. Unless it’s prelude is 15 minutes of sweating, shaking, difficulty breathing, crying, and just generally freaking out. I’m getting better now, but there was a good stretch where things were really really hard.
The injection isn’t the only terrible thing about PIO. My ass is killing me. The feeling is some satanic combination of sore muscle and muscle cramp, mixed with that kind of knot you get in you neck when you accidentally sleep like a contortionist. In other words, it fucking hurts. It’s sore, and full of painful lumps of medication deposits that a herd of masseuses couldn’t fix. I have no idea why I decided to call a group of masseuses a herd, but I’m going to run with it.
On top of this, we have the side effect. Side effects of PIO include (but are not limited to):
- Changes in appetite
- Bloating
- Fatigue
- Acne
- Nausea
- Headache
- Tender breasts
- Moodiness
This is not the standardized list of the side effects of Progesterone in Oil. These are my side effects. Woo hoo.
Best part? If I’m pregnant I get to continue the daily PIO shots for another 6-8 weeks. At least at some point I can make Casey do them so I don’t have to force myself into positions a yoga instructor couldn’t accomplish easily.