MTX Screw Up! | Arthritis Information
Rats! I messed up my MTX injection today. Last week I pre-filled my syringes as directed by the drug manufacturer. Which means I removed both protective sleeves from the syringe. I replaced the one for the needle but not the one for the plunger. So this morning when I went to do my injection, I removed the sleeve from the needle and (duh!) tried to remove the sleeve from the plunger (out of habit) which was no longer there. So....the plunger came all the way out. I tried putting it back in but there's air or something keeping the plunger from pushing up and moving the MTX. I can take my leftover pills today, but I hate to waste that whole syringe full of medicine I've already paid for. Is there anything I can do to get the plunger to work properly? I don't have any more vials so I can't even try to force the liquid into another container and re-draw it out. I'm not sure that would work anyway, since the plunger seems to be stuck in neutral. Any suggestions? Thanks!
P.S. I'll ask my pharmacist for help when CVS opens, but my experience so far has been that they have limited knowledge about some things and this may be one of them.
Jesse, if the CVS pharmacist can't/won't help, perhaps you can call the local hospital's pharmacy department and ask for some advice? Those pharmacists deal with injectables all day long.
Jess, Maybe just set it aside or put into frig if that is what you do and wait until tomorrow to call your doctor's office, a nurse there should be able to advise you.
When enbrel first came out, you had to inject the liquid into the powder, let it dissolve, then reload syringe -- boy did we make some silly mistakes in the beginning. Things happen, especially when we are on automatic pilot, and doing things out of rote, habit.
I take mtx shots once a week. My doc said its okay to shift it one day before or after regular injection day if I needed to, double check w/your doc. Sometimes things happen and you can't exactly stay on schedule.
Good luck, your problem has probably happened to somebody else before, so hopefully there's a way to save that mtx. Take care, and hope your day goes smoother.
Joie, thanks for your post and for making me feel like less of a dummy. Hopefully either the hospital or doctor's office will be able to advise me. Maybe I'm being cheap and should just give it up, but money is expensive!
Aw Jess, so sorry. I get that mad at my teeth bleaching syringes, so I feel your pain, but have never done personal injections, so good luck. CathyJess, this is way too much messing around with an inject. med. Please just throw it away. It costs pennies. MXT is not an expensive drug but an infection caused by drawing up the med, playing around with the plunger, injecting med back in vial, and redrawing the med will be much more costly. Pitch it, lesson learned. Lindyhi jess i never had to inject myself whith anything but i think
i would be worried about messing about whith the med..
as lin says start anew..
Boney
I'm with Lindy - it's not worth taking a chance. Yes, I suspect you're right, darn it. Penny wise and pound foolish. OK, it goes in the trash. A part of me knew that was the right thing to do, but the cheap side of me had to at least entertain an alternative. I think you made the right choice Jesse88. NOT worth the risk of saving the pennies or even dollars.
Jess, don't worry 'bout it. Back in the day when there were all these steps to preparing an enbrel injection -- putting in the plunger, injecting liquid into vial w/powder, reloading the syringe, attaching the needle -- my cousin and I messed up and wasted a dose. Felt really bad, THAT was a lot of money, but I called the enbrel folks and they provided me with a replacement. Thank goodness enbrel now comes premixed, preloaded, so much easier, even though my cousin has become a real pro at the whole shot business. Take care. I thought that Enbrel routine was the stupidist thing I'd ever seen. My hands couldn't hold on tight enough to twist the parts together and then twist them apart again. A flare is a bad time to start some new medicene with mechanics not meant for people in pain. I'd have to wait hours until someone came home to untwist the stupid containers. I finally called Enbrel and asked if I could just skip the whole twisting together part and inject the liquid into the powder with the syringe, drawing it back into the syringe and injecting it, oh no, that's not how we want you to do it. Will it hurt me to do it that way, No. It's medicene for people with arthritis, what were they thinking?
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