Curate, connect, and discover
Every two weeks I inject estradiol into my upper thigh muscle. There are six sites to choose from - the inner, middle, and outer surfaces of each leg - which I rotate through.
I'm a fan of middle thigh area. It's very easy to get a nice, perpendicular needle insertion. (The inner and outer thighs are trickier, often necessitating holding the needle at an angle or in a way where my own hand obscures the target.)
My last shot was into the right middle thigh. Perfect! I readied the syringe, swabbed the skin with an alcohol wipe, let it dry, pulled the skin taught, darted the needle in and screamed.
See, you can't really see what's under the skin; so sometimes you hit something on the way in that you shouldn't - like a blood vessel. I have an unerring ability to find blood vessels. It sucks, and it's unpleasant, but bearable.
This wasn't a blood vessel. It was a nerve.
There was probably a good minute or so of straight crying - needle sticking straight up out of my thigh, a tiny monument to my act of self-sabotage. Eventually I calmed down enough to inject the syringe contents and clean up.
I get that these sorts of things will happen when you routinely stab yourself on a fortnightly schedule but all the same, that was an experience I hope never, ever to repeat!