Can You Give Yourself a Shot?

After today, I have a newfound respect and awe for anyone who has to give themselves a shot or take any kind of blood sample from their own body.

You might recall that last week I purchased an Everlywell home cholesterol kit. It’s a lab test you can give yourself at home. I heard about the concept on Shark Tank, loved the ingenuity of it, and wanted to try it for myself.

Before I get to the bloody part, here’s how the unboxing went when I received the kit on Tuesday:

Overall, a professional-looking, clean, simple kit to use. I decided last night this morning would be the the time to use it, as you can’t take this particular test without fasting for 8-10 hours.

When I woke up this morning (okay, specifically, when Biddy woke me up this morning), it was with a sense of dread that I got out of bed. It’s hard to get excited about inflicting pain upon yourself.

But I put on my big boy pants (technically they’re baby blue pajama pants) and committed to follow through on the test. It’s for the blog, I told myself. It’s for the blog.

Really, it was one of those things that I just tried not to think about. I washed my hands, placed the sample card on my desk, placed the fingerprick device to my finger, and drew blood. Here’s what the sample card looked like afterwards:

I don’t mind blood or needles, but I have to say, after doing this, I can’t imagine going through this on a daily or weekly basis (i.e., for people with diabetes). It’s just so daunting to make yourself bleed. As inconvenient as it is to go to the lab, at least then I’m handing off the responsibility to someone else. That’s a lot easier than doing this to myself.

My conclusion is that I like the idea of Everlywell, and I’ll probably do it again…but I won’t want to!

Do you have experience giving yourself a shot or taking a blood sample from yourself? Do you consider it more difficult than having someone else do it to you?

6 thoughts on “Can You Give Yourself a Shot?”

  1. Whenever I think of sticking a needle into myself, I think of the movie “The Rock” where Nicholas Cage had to slam a 6-inch needle directly into his heart. I think I could do something like that–stick a needle into myself to save my life. However, when you first blogged about Everlywell, my instant thought was, “There is no way that I would choose to stick myself with a needle if I’m not absolutely required to do so.” (Basically, I would not use this kit.)

    Reply
    • For some reason that didn’t seem like a big barrier to me when I ordered the kit…but it definitely was when it came time to actually use it! If I do it again, I’ll try to watch that Nic Cage clip first.

      Reply
  2. Jamey,

    I run and eat healthy because the 9idea of being diabetic (I know several in my circle of friends) and having to give myself a shot fills me a bit of anxiety…and I honestly have no problem with needles, giving blood…heck, I was even awake for my first colonoscopy and watched it on the monitor. But,m giving myself a needle…oh, no!

    Cheers,
    Joe

    Reply
    • Joe: I can definitely see this being a great motivation to avoid being diabetic! I need to take that to heart, as I love chocolate.

      Reply
  3. A few years ago, I had a fairly significant B12 deficiency. We tried to treat it with sublingual tablets initially, but when those didn’t make a big difference in my lab results, my doctor recommended weekly B12 shots that I could give myself. It was harder than I anticipated!

    Getting through that mental barrier of actually piercing my skin with the syringe was way worse than the small amount of physical pain caused by the shot. I typically don’t mind it when someone else gives me a shot, but it probably took me 10-15 minutes to get up the courage to do it each time. Hopefully I never have to do anything like that again!

    Reply

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