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Well, I've had several people asking me about
the intravenous vitamin C that I have been doing, so
I thought I'd shoot a little video and
let people see my mug, see how I'm doing,
since I haven't done a video for quite a while now.
And, I hadn't done any intravenous vitamin C
for awhile, until yesterday.
It's been a... problematic process
to do the consistency and frequency
of vitamin C infusions that I think I need to be doing.
It's not an ideal situation at all.
The clinic that had been doing the infusions for me,
the technician there, after doing three or four infusions,
for some reason, suddenly freaked out about my *** status,
and was no longer comfortable doing them, and told me that.
It was like being kicked in the gut.
But, rather than getting angry with him,
I realized pretty quickly that he's just another victim
of the ignorance, and the confusion,
and the misunderstandings out there.
So I pretty much let him off the hook,
rather than trying to get revenge or something.
As part of the process,
he agreed to sell me the supplies
and the product to do the infusions myself.
All I needed to do was find a nurse.
So, that was actually the silver lining
of an otherwise bad situation,
because it helped move me that much closer to
where I want to be and need to be
if I'm going to keep doing this:
self sufficiency.
I can't afford to continue to go to infusion clinics to have this done.
It's too expensive and I'm not able to do it as often
as I think I should be doing it.
So, that was a couple of weeks ago.
I came home with a two weeks supply of the infusions.
The next step was finding a nurse to set me up,
to get the needle in a vein and to set up the drip.
I called around.
I have prescriptions from a doctor I had been seeing.
My local family practice doctor
also agreed to write a prescription.
She was actually pretty excited and enthusiastic about
what she was seeing, in terms of how I was doing,
both with my labs and with my energy and otherwise,
so she was on board with this.
That didn't seem to be enough.
This is not covered by Medicare or insurance,
and it's not something that the home health agencies do.
They can't just go to the pharmacy and pick it up, bring it over.
So, I was hitting a lot of road blocks that way.
I put an ad on Craigslist, very clearly specifying
what I was needing, and who I was, and got some responses.
Quite a few responses, but they weren't paying any attention,
they didn't read that I was ***-positive,
they didn't understand that this wasn't a full-time job.
I was getting resumes,
like I was some kind of home health agency, or something.
I was getting very discouraged and very frustrated.
Finally decided a week ago, I can do this myself because I've watched,
I've had so many blood draws and infusions the last 12 years,
it doesn't look like rocket science,
and I had everything I needed.
So I mixed up the infusion and I tried to hit my veins,
and was not successful.
It was... it was a pretty bad night.
I even called some friends of mine who are in recovery
from intravenous drug use and he came over with his son,
who is also a recovering addict, and they... you know,
if anybody can hit a vein, it's a junkie.
They were great guys. Really sensitive, nice guys,
but they weren't having any success either.
I understand now what the problem was.
They're used to hitting a vein with a needle on a syringe,
you draw back and know whether you're in a vein
by looking for the blood.
With the infusion, it uses a butterfly needle,
which works a little differently.
There is a way of knowing when you hit the vein,
but I didn't understand... I didn't understand
what that marker was a week ago.
I was out a hundred dollars worth of infusion material.
75 grams of vitamin C down the drain,
because it's only good for about 24 hours after you mix it.
My arms were bruised, and um, I went into a funk.
My energy was gone. I was sleeping all day, I...
don't know know, even now, which came first,
the fatigue and lethargy, or the depression.
They feed off of each other,
and I'm no stranger to depression.
Then, yesterday, Craigslist paid off,
and my angel came through.
I call her Craig.
She's a 12 year cancer survivor.
She knows the flaws of the existing system,
and we really hit it off.
And she really hit my vein, first time, and
made me aware of what I was not seeing before
on the butterfly needle.
I'm sure, a week ago, I hit a vein more than once,
and my friends probably hit a vein.
We just didn't know it.
So, it was a learning experience.
I got my infusion going, and within...
even before is was done... it takes about 90 minutes,
and probably an hour or so,
I could tell the difference.
I could feel some energy returning.
It's so subjective, I feel almost nervous sharing that.
I mentioned to Michael,
"I'm feeling better already."
And the joke is, he looked at me and he said,
"is it the vitamin C,"
"or is it just because you're getting your way finally?"
And it's probably a little bit of both.
But regardless, my energy has been vastly improved,
I woke up at 1 o'clock this morning, and I've been up since then,
and it's now mid-afternoon.
The days past, in the last week or two,
I would've been in bed most of the day.
So, this is definitely a learning curve.
It's a learning curve about vitamin C;
it's a learning curve about intravenous infusions;
it's a learning curve about making videos.
I took some pictures and videos yesterday,
was using a different camera,
so the quality is going to be inconsistent.
The narrating and editing will probably be choppy,
but we're learning.
We're going to see where this goes.
So, the rest of the video
is going to show you what the process
of preparing the infusion is like,
and sitting in a chair with the drip going in,
since... since you want to know.
These are the components of the infusion that I did yesterday.
You see that there are three boxes that have the
concentrated ascorbate in them at the front,
and infusion bag, a large syringe towards the back,
and the clear bottle is magnesium chloride,
which is used to help prevent clotting and protect the veins.
The ascorbate, or ascorbic acid, is concentrated and
comes in 500 ml bottles.
There's 25 grams of vitamin C in each bottle.
And, even though you didn't see it, I did swab
the top of this bottle with an alcohol swab
before drawing the ascorbate into a large syringe,
and then inject the ascrobate into the infusion bag,
which is filled with sterile water.
I do this with all three bottle of ascorbic acid,
as well as 10cc's of magnesium chloride.
I now have a one-liter bag of sterile water with 75 grams of ascorbic acid.
This is also 75 grams of vitamin C.
Well, so much for the fun stuff.
The rest is the hook up and delivery,
which we're not going to cover in much detail in this video.
The infusion takes about 90 minutes,
which is a good opportunity to read a book,
or meditate,
or just sit quietly for a bit.
The high dose of vitamin C makes you really thirsty,
so it's good to have a bottle of water on hand.
And the IV keeps you pretty tethered, so the urinal comes in handy as well.
And the IV keeps you pretty tethered, so the urinal comes in handy as well.