How do you consistently do the injection?

People always seem surprised to hear that I've been on Copaxone since I was diagnosed and that I've given myself a daily injection for the last ten years. It's beyond routine now, so I don't even think about it, but I know some people can't stick with it. Why have I been able to?

The first injection was the most scary. It got a lot easier after that. After that first injection, in fact, I was a bit light-headed and had to lay down for a while. I had concerns that I'd had some strange reaction to the medication. Looking back, it's pretty funny... I know I was just experiencing anxiety. It's a pretty foreign experience for most of us to self administer an injection.

For the first period of being on Copaxone, my mantra was "My odds are better on this stuff." That was enough to overlook the inconvenience and sometime discomfort that comes with the medication. Statistics alone made it a given that I was going to do it.

After a while, say after a few years, I started having a confidence that the medication didn't just carry a probability of success. It was actually working for me.

After ten years, I'm wholly convinced that taking Copaxone has dramatically changed the course of my MS. If you're waffling on using a medication, especially if the hang-up is a mental block about poking yourself, do it anyway. After a while, you have to work to remember if you've done it that day or not. This brings me to a more practical tip, make sure you do it at the same time each day. My injection is now the last thing I do before I go to bed. It used to be first thing in the morning, which was fine, but evenings work better. Definitely that's just a personal preference thing.

This gives me a chuckle - In the first year or two, my wife used to ask me from time to time if she could "practice" administering the injection in case there was a day that I couldn't. My standard answer was that she could practice on the day I couldn't do it. I certainly have no problem giving myself the injection now, but if my wife wanted to practice a "refresher" injection every month or year, I'd still be getting the sweats.