On the way home from work I was struck with the thought, “Was that B12 shot supposed to be given today?”. And now this shot has been in my head ever since. My thought process in the moment went something like that like this:

“Oh crap, an IM shot.” IM means intramuscular. This has popped up only one other time that I remember and for some reason did not end up giving it. I dug around in his drawer and found the bag with the vial. I opened the bag and saw the instructions. “Gdksh sldhd ei shd on Mondays“. My next thought was not “Oh wait, that’s weird. It says Monday but today is Saturday. I better double check and see more what’s going on…” Instead I thought, “Oh wait, that’s weird. It says Monday but today is Saturday. I guess the days must’ve been switched, since it popped up on the MAR.”

And the MAR instructions are fuzzy too. I cannot tell you what I read other than something like Give slkd skdht edhel once weekly starting 09/dk/24. “Oh”, I thought when I saw the date, “this is something new since the last time I was here.”

The supervisor walked up while I was standing at the cart. She was checking on the halls to see how people were doing. “Good”, I said, “and also…” I’m looking in the med cart’s top shelf where the insulin needles are. I’m simultaneously trying to ask for help while demonstrating that I’m not completely incompetent or just wanting her to do it all. There’s a hall supply room where the needles might be…I check there first, but they weren’t in there. She actually had to take me to the main supply room to a locked cabinet where the 3cc needles are kept. I didn’t even know that existed.

I guess at the key. It’s got to be one of the little ones as she’s standing right next to me. I sound like I’m nervous and overthinking but I’m really just glad she’s there and can show me these things. We get the B12 liquid drawn up and she leaves.

I’ve given IM shots before. In school we had to do a flu shot clinic where we spent the whole day standing at a table giving strangers their shots. They came in with hope that these things would better keep them safe from some illness, and lifted up their sleeves in full faith that the person holding the needle was safe to be doing so. There have been other times here and there but I don’t like them because the needles are so long. It’s not bad when someone has a thick enough arm but not everyone does. This man still had muscle you could feel and I was impressed by it’s size.

But if he wasn’t supposed to get it until Monday then we have a problem. There was not even anything else going on. There was the woman in the slowly dying phase, but the night was calm, thank the Lord. If that was error #3 then I’m quitting.