As part of your protocol, your doctor has instructed Lovenox. Lovenox is a blood thinner that you will pick up at your local retail pharmacy. It comes in a few different doses, sometimes 30 milligrams, sometimes 40 milligrams, sometimes 60 milligrams.  It comes in a box of 10 individual doses. Each syringe you'll use one time.

You'll open the plastic and take out the preloaded syringe. You'll take the cap off the top  and then you'll just push the plunger until you see a bleb of fluid come out the top and now it's ready to inject.

When you go to inject your Lovenox, you'll do it subcutaneously. And you'll push on this white plunger all the way down until the bottom, and then you'll push harder once you get to the end, and you'll see that this auto safety mechanism comes out when you get to the bottom of your syringe. That just protects you from getting poked by the needle at the end.

Alright, so just to replay that one more time. When you're pushing down the white part at the end, you're going to push it all the way to the bottom to deliver the medication. When you get to the bottom, you're going to push again and you'll feel a bit of a click, and then the safety mechanism will engage.

That will automatically kind of come out and cover up the needle when you've pulled it out of your skin. Now you're ready to discard your Lovenox into your biohazard bin or your sharps container.

How to Perform a Subcutaneous Injection

Now that you have your medication prepared, here's a video on how to perform a subcutaneous injection.

First, these injections are going to go into your abdomen. So you'll pick a spot two fingers away from your belly button and inject anywhere in your tummy.

The injection is going into that fatty layer of tissue right under the skin. So two fingers away anywhere in your tummy, just like this.
When you're doing your injections, you'll pick a spot, and then you'll rotate your sites. So try not to poke into exactly the same spot as you did already today or yesterday. Try to rotate the spots a little bit. Even a finger away is helpful.

When you're ready, you'll use an alcohol swab to clean the area that you're going to inject into, and then you'll give that a few seconds to dry. You'll take the cap off of your prepared needle and pinch your skin where you're going to do the injection. You'll inject at 90 degrees all the way in. Push the plunger on the syringe down until all of the medication has been delivered.

Then you can relax your skin and pull out the needle. A little bit of blood, a little bit of liquid might come out. That's okay. It's normal. You can use a tissue to hold the spot until the bleeding stops.

And then when you're done, make sure that you put your used needle into a sharps container or your medical waste bag.