To me, it has always just made sense to carry two epinephrine auto-injectors. It's as simple as following directions. They come in packs of two, so why would I only carry around half of the product? I don't only wear one shoe everyday, and I'm certainly not going to carry around just one Epipen/Auvi-Q.
Being prescribed a life saving medication by a doctor, I never really questioned why the dose is the dose. I blindly and loyally carry my auto-injectors everywhere I go, making sure they stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and never in my car overnight.
All of that changed when I was in college. I suddenly learned the hard way why we carry auto-injectors at all.
As I write more posts, you'll learn a lot about me. One of the things you'll learn is I am extremely meticulous and beyond cautious. That's why it surprised nobody more than me when I had to use my auto-injector for the first time.
The year leading up to my anaphylactic reaction was when the allergy community started to say you should always give the epinephrine and not wait for the symptoms. So that's what I had in my head. My throat felt funny, different in a way it never felt before. But was it really closing? Should I wait to find out? No, just use it. So I did.
But nobody ever really talks about giving the second dose, and at the time, I didn't think to do it.
Once I was in the Emergency Room, the nurse asked me about the dosage. She told me that with the reaction I was having, I should have administered more medication. She explained that sometimes one isn't enough, and even though I thought I did everything right, I could've used my second.
It took having a major reaction to realize two things. The first one was nothing prepared me for that moment when I gave myself an auto-injector, but once I did, I realized the reaction itself is so much more terrifying than the shot. And the second was, giving myself two doses of epinephrine when having a reaction was not going to make anything worse for me, and in fact really would have helped. I already did it the first time, and the second time I already knew what to expect.
This is a device designed to literally save our lives, so why would I want to limit my chances by only carrying one?
