To B12 or not To B12?...Is Hardly the Question

I did not think a lot of it when my doctor prescribed B12 injections a couple of weeks ago.

Until the B12 arrived through my mail order pharmacy, but the syringes did not.

Until I secured the syringes through another pharmacy. 

Until I grew queasy at the thought of "putting the needle 3/4 of the way into the muscle," as the pharmacist instructed. 

Until I looked at the syringes, and saw that they are roughly 5 million times bigger than the ones I use for insulin. 

Until. 

Until. 

Until.  

As I and the B12 faced off, I went through the motions, drawing on what I know from a lifetime of insulin injections. I used an alcohol swab to sanitize the vial.  After my first attempt to draw up any of the red liquid failed, I injected air into the vial, and opened the way for the liquid (serum?) to fill the syringe.  I tapped agains the syringe, and pushed the plunger to remove the air bubble.  I swabbed the injection site.  I held the needle up to the light, revealing the beveled, sharp edge of the needle.  I squeezed my skin up, inserting the needle and working against physics to inject the B12 far below the skin. 

It was hardly the same experience as an insulin shot. I am not claiming I did it right. 

But at least I had prior knowledge. 

I needed it.

Other than the pharmacist's directions, which I got when I asked, the only instructions I got were to do "1 ML B12 Weekly."  A shot I was supposed to--per the Kafka-esque logic of someone, somewhere-- magically give myself without the benefit of a syringe.  Of a medicine that my doctor called B12, but arrived in the mail under its other name, cobalamin, because that is not confusing at all.  

Initially, that prior knowledge wasn't enough to get me to  actually do the injection, the process of which ended when I held the needle up to the light.

It winked at me, gleefully.  I am sure I heard it say "nah nah nah nah nah nah." 

I returned to the pharmacy, where I asked for something smaller.

I debated if I I would use whatever something smaller--if I would shamefully waste the B12 out of sheer exhaustion, perversity, and stubbornness.  

To B12 or not to B12 became a real (if predicable) question.  

But that is hardly the question.  The bigger questions: 

• On what planet does it make sense to say "go home and give yourself a shot" without some training--even if the person has some experience in the medically-approved injection department?  
• By what logic does it make sense to cover or deliver half of a prescription but not the other half, when one will not work without the other?
• Why are the terms that patients know their meds by not used consistently across the board? Why does a doctor test for vitamin D, and prescribe it and B12, only to have them appear on pharm charts and in mail delivery as cobalamin and calciferol? Does this not strike someone as dangerous, considering that some meds should not be mixed, and a patient cannot confirm or deny what they take if the words used are not the ones they know? 

I have no answers for those.  But as for the question of to B12 or not B12?  Two weeks after the initial prescription, one week after the B12 arriving, 6 days after getting the first syringes from the pharmacy, two days after getting the second batch--at least one existential question is answered.