As a part of your protocol, your doctor has instructed you to use Saizen 5 mg dose.

In the box, you'll find the diluent and the medication, and it will be dispensed from Markham Fertility Centre Dispensary with a 3 mL syringe with a needle attached for mixing, and another needle for injecting, as well as some alcohol swabs.

When you're doing a 5 mg dose of Saizen, each of these boxes is one dose, one time use.

You'll start by opening the plastic package and you'll take out the vial of diluent and the vial of medication. The diluent is this clear liquid  and the medication is the white powder. You'll start by taking the plastic caps off the top of the vials, and you'll open the syringe with the needle attached.

Start by twisting the needle onto the syringe to make sure it's nice and tight on the syringe. It should be nice and firm. Then you'll pull back on the syringe until the plunger's at about 1 mL where the 1 line is.

You'll take the lid off the top of the needle and put it into the vial with liquid, the diluent vial, and you'll push that air into the vial, and then you'll turn it upside down, making sure that the needle tip is in the liquid, not in the air, and you'll pull back until there's about 1 mL of fluid in your syringe.

Then you'll take that off and put the needle into the powder.  Push the liquid into the powder and mix it around, gently swirl the vial until you'll see it's dissolved again into a mostly clear fluid.

Then you'll turn that upside down and making sure that the needle tip is in the liquid again, withdraw the medication back into the syringe until you get all the liquid that you can get out of that vial.

And then pull back so  that there is air at the top of the vial. So medications down here, air is up here. And then you'll put the cap back on this needle tip,  twist it off,  and you'll exchange it for the smaller  needle that you're going to use to inject. Twist that onto the top of the syringe. Again, make sure it's nice and firm snug on the top, and we'll take that lid off. And then slowly push the plunger up from the bottom, squeezing out the air from the top of the syringe until you see a bleb of fluid come out the top of the needle. And now your 5 mg of Saizen is ready to inject.

You'll notice when you're mixing the medication, you've used 1 mL of diluent to mix it. You may not end up with 1 mL exactly at the end. You lose a little bit when you're doing the drawing up. The most important thing is that you've gotten all of the liquid that you can out of this small vial that had the medication in it. That's where the Saizen is.

Now that you've mixed it and primed your needle, you're ready to move on to the next part of this video where we'll go over landmarking and performing the subcutaneous injection to deliver your Saizen.

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.