Hi,
Congrats on doing your first Copaxone shot. I've been on it for 4 years now and so far so good, antijinx. Sometimes it stings sometimes it doesn't but it only lasts a few minutes for me. Hang in there.

Another member of the C Club. I heard Jennifer wasn't allowed in.

In the beginning (I'm always tempted to say, "God said, 'Let there be light. And there was light.'"), it stung for quite a while. Then sometimes thereafter it would sting just a little bit or not at all and there would be a few weeks where it would sting like it did in the beginning. I have no clue why it went that way, but maybe it depended on the batch.

Good for YOU for getting through it. It's certainly a mindset change. I couldn't handle it at first because it made me feel like I was sick--like the syringe was a visible sign of me being ill. Ugh... I got over that and moved to just disliking the injections! LOL

Congratulations!

I took Copaxone for five years, and it seems that after awhile it would sting only occasionally. I'm numb on my left side, so it's a relief when I do left-sided Betaseron injections because I don't feel a thing.

I'm past the 6 month point on Copaxone, and I find the sting now only lasts a couple minutes for me. At first it was lasting 20-25 minutes.

I never pre-medicated or applied heat/cold. I also do my shots manually however.

The Dimpled One brings up a good point--manual injections.

You might want to do some manual injections every once in a while. One day you'll find yourself somewhere and you'll have left the blooming Autoinflictor home. So you'll HAVE to do a manual injection. It's very different staring at the needle going into your skin than putting the Autoinflictor there and pressing the button whilst grimacing.

Not to mention that the manual injections are easier than using the autoinflictor. You can control how quickly you inject, and doing manual injections is a lot more gentle to your skin. You dont have a harpoon blasting thru your skin.

I just passed my 1yr C-versary (Copaxone anniversary) I dont think I had made it to the six month anniversary before I switched to doing manual injections. So much easier, and really a lot less painful...still itches like crazy on my left leg a lot for some reason tho.

Thanks everyone. We did practice manual injections on a small ball, but it's probably a good idea to do a few manually. How do you know how far to put the needle in?