Doing something wrong...?

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evakot

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Hi All,

So- I have just given the first shot of Lantus to my kitty. It was harder than I thought, for two reasons:

1. I had to draw the insulin 3 times because each time I had an air bubble in the syringe...?! I have a SoloStar pen and the recommended ReliOn syringes. What am I doing wrong here?

2. When I was injecting my cat he flinched and pulled the needle out. There was a tiny dropplet left on the tip of the needle, so the whole dose didn't get in. I know that the flank is a better injection site than the scuff, but I remember that when I injected him in the scuff in January (he had 3 shots in Januray, after which he went on 8 month remission and was diet controlled) he seemed to not even realize he was getting a shot. Is there any "intermediate" place I could shoot him in? One that doesn't have poor circlation like the scuff, but is not as sensitive as his flank? He has a lot of skin on front half of his body, and not a whole lot on the back, so pulling skin on his flank was hard and seemed to hurt him.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Have a great Sunday All!!

Eva
 
Air bubbles are common. I always pull in slightly more insulin than I need. Pull the syringe out of the solostar pen. Pull the plunger down in the syringe and flick it slightly if there is a bubble on the plunger side, and push the plunger back up to get rid of the air (kinda like how they show doctors getting a shot ready on tv with the dramatic squirt of fluid into the air lol). Do not push the insulin back into the pen once you have drawn it out though - it is no longer sterile and can cause the insulin in the pen to go bad quicker than it would have otherwise.

Anywhere on the side of the cat is ok to shoot insulin. A lot of kitties don't have a lot of loose skin when starting shots because of weight loss, so in my experience, I shoot where I can properly tent the skin. If where you shot earlier hurt and there wasn't a lot of skin, then you might have accidentally poked the muscle, which can be painful sometimes. If there is more skin further up his side (more toward his head) then that sounds fine to me. Just try to rotate the injection site a little so that kitty doesn't get scar tissue build up.
 
I went with behind the shoulders/side of the chest (http://www.bd.com/us/diabetes/page.aspx ... 01&id=7374). It worked really well for us as the stomach is off limits with my girl and when I tried the flanks, I got the pre-bite nasty look. And one side was less sensitive than the other, so it's worth trying both.

Also, you may already know this, but cold insulin can hurt. If it's room temp, you'll definitely get less flinching.

Good luck!
 
My experience is the ReliOn syringes have more bubble problems than the "gold standard" BD syringes. However, the ReliOn syringes are about half the cost.
 
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