It was bound (pun intended) to happen. On Saturday, I fucked up my Zepbound injection. The drill is that to get the Lilly Direct special pricing, I get my Zepbound in refrigerated vials and Lily also send me hypodermic needles and alcohol swabs so that I can self-administer the injections. The process is to take the plastic cap off the vial, exposing the rubber top membrane. Then I open the alcohol swabs and clean the top of the vial and rub whatever portion of skin I choose to inject. For self-injection, the belly is the easiest, though I occasionally use my outer upper arm. I then take the hypodermic out of the wrapper and take the orange plastic caps off either end, exposing the plunger and the hair-fine needle. I pull back the plunger to allow air into the needle tube, carefully pierce the vial membrane with the needle and push the air into the vial to create some exit pressure for the meds. I then invert the vial and pull back the plunger to pull the meds into the hypodermic. You’ve been watching this since Ben Casey or Marcus Welby or maybe ER or The Pitt. I then do the perfunctory tap on the hypodermic to break any air bubbles and, holding the needle upward, push the plunger to see that the fluid comes out the needle a bit. Then I try to remember the spot where I swabbed on my belly and stick the bugger in and depress the plunger and voila…I am fully Zepbounded.
When we are at home, Kim usually helps me with this, but I have done it enough myself to be comfortable with the process. I will admit that my recent left hand problems require me to concentrate a bit more, but I seem to be OK with it. This Saturday (that is my weekly Zepbound morning) I was in a hotel room on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood and I had my unrefrigerated vile (Lilly says that’s OK for when you travel…I don’t get it…it should either need refrigeration or not). I went through the drill as described and the lighting was not great in the room so I wanted to be sure that micro-fine needle was OK. As I stared at it, naturally, I fumbled it and it fell to the carpeted floor, sticking straight into the nasty hotel carpeting. When something like that happens the first thing you think of is whether the five second rule applies to a needle stuck in hotel carpeting. My guess is that it doesn’t, but then the second thing comes to mind. This is a weekly drug that you have become highly depended on to keep your weight loss program moving forward and while I had an extra syringe medication was already in the syringe so I wasn’t sure how I would get it out of there and into the new syringe. As you can imagine my command decision of the moment was to throw a caution to the wind and try to inject the questionable syringe into my belly. When I did so what I noticed was that the plunger was not plunging properly and then I noticed that medication was dripping down my belly as though it was not going where it was supposed to go through the needle. In other words, I suspected that the entire injection was fucked up.
There really was no way to tell for sure what is going on with the medication, but I was pretty sure that an insufficient amount of it had found its way into my subcutaneous regions. In fact, there was a small welt around the injection site, which made me wonder all sorts of things about what I had done to myself. I decided to just go about my day and see what happened. I did check the injection site and saw no untoward, redness or signs of infection but I also didn’t notice that normal Zepbound day tightness in my gut that implied that it was doing its job. Over the next two days while running around Los Angeles. I really didn’t eat too much but I also didn’t feel that Zepbound was doing its job. I was very curious what the scale would tell me on Monday morning.
Today is Monday and as I got on the scale, I noticed that I was 2 pounds heavier, which to me meant that I had indeed for gone my Zepbound injection. The next question is what to do? I don’t know what the Zepbound handbook says but I decided that I would just give myself another shot this morning which is what I did. My logic is that even it what is a very slight weight historically for me of 260 pounds I’m still at the big end of the Zepbound user spectrum, so I tend to think that a little more that bound won’t hurt me. I’m sure this is the same brilliance that made me decide to inject myself with a hotel carpet needle two days before. Today I’m feeling that familiar Zepbound gut wrench so I’m guessing I will shed those 2 pounds in the next few days and perhaps then some.
I’ve always known since I started Zepbound that I would be on it for the rest of my life. Today I read a story about Microdosing GLP-1 and why that strategy which is being deployed by some people is ineffective. The narrative was that the manufacturers of the drugs know what works and doesn’t work and you shouldn’t mess around with dosing. I would be curious to hear what they think of my approach to my dosing issue. Claude tells me it’s not a good idea to overdose Zepbound and that I need to watch for Saenz like abdominal cramping and low blood sugar. Since I don’t have a blood sugar issue, I doubt that will be a problem, but I will be watching for any signs of nausea or cramping and will act accordingly.