Dead space

[aloil]

I've noticed that I lose about 10 units in the needle/syringe every time I draw. If I put 100 units of bac water in my vial for two doses of 50 and draw 50 units the first week, the second week I only have 30 units left. This makes sense if I'm actually drawing 60 units the first week but only able to inject 50, then can draw 40 the next week but can only inject 30.

I've considered reconstituting with more bac water and injecting 100 units rather than 50, which would reduce the amount of lost tirz due to dilution, but I'd still lose 10% and 100 units is a lot to inject.

I've also thought of pulling some air into the syringe after filling it with the medication, inverting the syringe so the air is the last thing to get injected, and then trying to inject only as much air as I need to get all the liquid in. That would likely lead to some injected air, but a tiny amount of air in my subq fat won't hurt anything. It's also a habit to draw back every time to make sure I'm not in a vessel, though it's really overkill for this. There aren't any decent sized vessels in the area where I inject and that small an amount of air wouldn't matter even if I was in a major vessel.

How are you handling this? I don't like losing 20% of each vital of tirz and I want consistent dosing instead of getting less every time I get to the end of a vial.

 

[penewbie]

10 Units is a crazy amount to lose each time.

Are you using Leur lock syringes instead of insulin syringes?

 

[aloil]

10 Units is a crazy amount to lose each time.

Are you using Leur lock syringes instead of insulin syringes?

Yes, that probably wasn't my best choice. I went with what I was more familiar with without thinking about the difference in volume (10 mL vs 1 mL syringe).

Edit: ok that was dumb. I should have bought insulin syringes since they have lower dead space because of the need for accurate dosing. I'm glad the thing I didn't even realize I needed to consider just resulted in some waste rather than anything dangerous.