Hi Carolyn,

The site and info Anne-Marie posted is great. Print it off and keep it for future reference. (I just did and will give some of it to my son’s new school). The only other thing that I was taught to do when giving the injection is to make sure that after you insert the needle into the thigh, you pull back on the plunger slightly to make sure there is no blood. If clear, go ahead and plunge the cortef. If blood, try another site to ensure you inject the cortef in muscle and not a vein.

I’ve had to give an injection once (so far) when my son was about 2 years old. He had the flu and was vomitting. I contacted the endocrinologist on-call for advice.After giving extra oral hydrocortisone and that was vomitted too, I was instructed to take him to the hospital.Having experienced too many delays on another occasion when he was 8 months old and had the flu, I decided to give him the injection myself BEFORE we went to the hospital. He perked up pretty quickly after this, but we took him to the hospital for a check. After only a couple of hours, we were released because he started nursing well and was keeping fluids down. When he was 8 months, I had to threaten the nurses that I was going to give him the injection myself if they didn’t hurry up. The doctor had left his orders, but the nurses obviously didn’t understand how urgent this was and they wanted to wait for a shift change so a pediatric nurse would come down and try to put in an IV. I watched my son go from being fairly perky (despite having vomitted a few times) to being very lethargic and refusing to nurse (too weak) while we were waiting for the nurses to get off their #@@’s.! This was when I learned that we as parents need to be very vocal about our children’s needs because the medical community doesn’t always know. (A scary realization). I did finally convince the nurses to give the injection and eventually he got the needed IV. It took him a couple of days in hospital to get over this bug and I often wonder that if he had received the injection at home before the hospital, he may have recovered much more quickly.

Now I know that if I am in doubt, and my instinct tells me that my son needs the injection, I won’t hesitate to do it. It’s really not scary to do(once you’ve done it once.)  It’s better to play it safe.

Hope my rather long story helps you a little. Anne-Marie’s post is a great reference.

TAke care - Jill T