Quote from: harlee on May 06, 2013, 07:40:38 PM
I finally got taught how to inject myself and when I asked about aspirating, my nurse said I didnt need to because my legs are skinny enough. Is this true? Should I do it anyway? 
When you pull back on the needle, can you feel it sucking? If you aspirate and blood goes into your needle, can you still use that testosterone? If you get blood in the needle and have to inject again, how can you tell if you have gone into a vein for a second time when you aspirate again? Another thing Im worried about is not getting it in my muscle, but that has to be a stupid worry right? Because you cant miss it? As long as you put it in somewhere between your knee and hip, it should be fine? Thanks guys 
I'm not a professional, but I have given myself literally hundreds of injections over many years of various different kinds for varying (mostly legit medical) reasons.
With that aside, here's my advice.
1. You probably don't 'need' to aspirate, it's actually often pretty tricky to hit a vein even trying on purpose. If you're injecting in the appropriate area for IM or SC injections, you're very unlikely to have hit a vein at all, and even more unlikely to have the bevel of the needle resting in the vein to give yourself an unintended IV injection.
2. If you DID give yourself an IV injection by accident, you would likely sense a strange taste in your mouth within a few seconds, if that doesn't happen it's even more unlikely still that you would have done it by accident.
3. No you can't feel it sucking in, not with IM, SC, IV, not with any injection I have ever done in myself at least. You're really either going to be in a blood vessel or in muscle or fat, in a blood vessel you'd just be drawing up blood and so the pressure differential you're causing through suction is negligible, and muscle and fat at too thick and strong to be drawn into any normal gauge needle so all you'll get is a vacuum in the syringe, which with any normal volume syringe is going to only exert a relatively mild suction effect on your tissue. In the end though none of it really matters since there's no nerve endings I'm aware of in those areas to sense pain in the first place. It's not the sucking that hurts, it's the creation of pressure from injecting a volume of liquid itself.
4. Ok hypothetically lets say you did hit a blood vessel and now you have blood in the syringe. In 'theory', it would not be recommended to continue, medical protocol would say you should discard the entire syringe in a sharps container and start over.
In practice however, I can't see why it would be a problem. It's your blood, now granted it will coagulate which might be an issue if you were to inject into a vein, but you shouldn't be doing that in the first place given the point is an IM injection. I wouldn't get too paranoid over it though. I can say from personal experience that I have seen and done stuff exactly like what you're describing and have yet to see anyone die from it. It's one of those things that falls under "you should avoid it in practice, but it's not worth worrying about in practice 99% of the time". As for checking the second time if you happened to hit a vein again after drawing up blood the first time, which again I want to stress is a highly unlikely scenario, if it would help put your mind at ease, here's how you would know. When you draw up from a blood vessel, you are filling the volume of the syringe, which means you are not creating a vacuum. Even if you couldn't tell the difference from the medication and the blood (unlikely cause vein blood is very very dark), you should be able to tell from the ease with which the plunger can be aspirated if it's in a vessel and not muscle or fat. A needle in a vein will draw up blood quickly and the plunger will move freely and not try to remain in place under pressure.
I get why you're concerned, most people are. But I can assure you I have seen and done a lot of things stupider and riskier than anything you're describing and yet to see a major problem happen. The primary things you really should be careful about, is simply ensuring you don't hit a vein or worse, an artery (if you hit an artery, bright red blood will flow into the syringe quickly at which point you should remove the needle and apply pressure for at least 5-7 minutes and seek medical attention immediately if you're still bleeding excessively).
Personally, I would recommend you aspirate. I still think your nurse is right that it's an extremely low risk of you hitting a vein to start with, but eh, aspirating does no harm that I know of, and it's a pretty sure fire way to know, so why take the chance?
As for doing an IM shot SC or vice versa, (e.g. not being in the muscle), sure it's something to avoid, and you certainly wouldn't want to make a habit of it, but it's not the end of the world. This would be a whole different issue if you were injecting something not sterile, but with proper sterile equipment and medications, I wouldn't worry too much about anything going horribly wrong.
