Today was my first load day. You'd think gorging on as much fat and protein as you can stuff down would be fun, but it's actually a little sickening. Necessary and enjoyable, but by the end of the night it's a bit of a chore. Still, Dr. Simeon is very specific about the necessity of these days to the success of the first week of the protocol, and I'm not about to argue with him on it! My mother said much the same - a solid load made her second round much easier than her first, where she was a bit afraid to eat as much as was being asked.

It was quite a learning curve today, because I had to reconstitute my freeze dried hCG (Novarel/Hucog) with my sodium chloride water and come up with my dose. I've never done much with mixing sterile solutions and that is where the bulk of the learning curve came in, but I think I did fine. Lots of alcohol swabbing and sterilizing the equipment, but one can't be too careful with hygiene in working with something that's injected under the skin, right?

My hCG is in 2000 iU vials and I need 125 iU each day. I mixed 4 cc's of the sodium chloride water with the hCG to get 16 days of doses, before I need to make a new batch. hCG has a short shelf life and is a delicate molecule, so having just two weeks or so of solution made up at a time and kept in the fridge is ideal.

Despite some twitchiness over the needles and learning a bit about positive and negative pressure in these sealed mixing bottles, all went off without a hitch. Then the real shakiness began, as I loaded up a dose into my itty bitty insulin-style subcutaneous syringe and braced myself. I am a bit terrified of needles and so voluntarily sticking myself is kind of scary. I manned up and did it, but there was much anxiety and gnashing of teeth. It stinged and ached a bit, but nothing that I'd classify as particularly awful. Still, it's no walk in the park.

I may do the next round sublingually (under the tongue) instead of injected, but that requires twice the amount of hCG because of how it is absorbed (not as well as straight into the body via injection) and that stuff isn't cheap. So if I can handle the needles without too much cringing this time around I'll likely just stick with them (haha ;) .

I did things slightly backwards today, as I loaded up before my injection due to not having time to sit and mix it up, but it shouldn't affect anything huge. The first several doses are getting it into the system and working, the spacing being slightly cluttered for a day isn't going to be crucial. I've been eating enough the past few days that the load isn't going to make or break the integrity of my fat stores, but this slight deviation from my planned timing is still a bit annoying, though trivial. My next dose is tomorrow morning, we'll see how it goes, eh?

The next post, if I remember, I will give my starting weight and measurements, though my last pictures should be as accurate as anything right now, since I yo-yo'd back up to the weight I was when I took them from my previous low. I'm glad I haven't made a habit of regaining weight, because even these ten pounds have absolutely sucked.

More information and intrepid journalling to follow tomorrow. Adios!