As a part of your protocol, your doctor has instructed you to use Suprefact. Suprefact will come in a box with a vial like this. You'll also receive a syringe with a needle tip or a different syringe that looks like this may be with a needle already attached, one or the other, and you'll receive an alcohol swab.

To get started, you'll open your box of Suprefact. You'll notice that there's about 5.5 mL of fluid in here. We're going to use 0.5 mL for this dose, so there's lots of leftover, in this case. You'll take the cap off of the vial, and then you'll open your syringe.

And the needle tip, if this is the supplies that you have, and you'll twist the needle onto the top of the syringe, so it's nice and snug. You want to twist it so it's nice and firm there. And then you'll pull back to about half a mil of air. So to about 0.5 mL.

And you'll take the cap off the top. You'll open your alcohol swab and use the alcohol swab to clean the top of the vial,

and then you'll push the needle in, into the plunger and push the air in and you'll turn it upside down. And you'll pull back the fluid into the syringe until you have about 0.5 mL or whatever dose you've been prescribed. Usually it's 0.5 mL, but there may be times when it's more or less if you notice that you have a bubble of air in the syringe, you can kind of flick it to try and get it to the top, get it outta the way. And then pull back to fill it back up with medicine and push it back up until the black plunger is at the 0.5 mL line or again, whatever dose you've been prescribed. And you'll take the vial off the top of the needle and it's ready for injection.

In the next part of this video, we'll show you how to landmark and perform your subcutaneous injection to deliver your Suprefact.

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.