First injection

Today was Mason's first shot ever. Yesterday I picked up his very expensive Procrit from the pharmacy ($100 copay!), and today he got his first injection. Aaron held him, and he only cried for a minute. Luckily it's a subcutaneous injection instead of in the muscle. His nurse Ramona did it very quickly. As soon as we were in the car he was smiling and back to his normal self. It went as well as it could. The hardest part of the morning was the lab work. The doctor ordered just a hematocrit finger prick, which didn't sound so bad...better, I thought, than the full-on tourniquet/vein draw. It was horrible. First of all it's really more of a cut than a poke, and she had to hold his thumb tight while she collected 3 little vials of blood, Mason screaming the whole time. And then his thumb would just not quit bleeding, so she had to hold cotton ball after cotton ball for maybe 10 minutes. At this point I know it didn't hurt anymore, but it was really scary to him that this strange lady would not let go of his hand. I nursed him while she was trying to get the bleeding to stop, and it calmed him down (which probably helped with the bleeding), though he definitely kept his eyes on her. Poor little guy. He fell asleep in the car on the way home after all that excitement. One down, two or three more to go. The next two weeks we do the hematocrit first, to see if he needs an additional injection of Procrit.

Thanks Katherine for the text! We saw it in the waiting room before Mason's appointment and it helped me relax a little!