someone posted a video that showed the correct way to get insulin out, it showed/talked about pushing air into the vital. Can someone repost that or tell me which thread its in so I can watch it again? Ive been using PZI for years and never knew I was supposed to be doing this also, have to teach someone to check BG level and give insulin , if there are more videos that teach how to do all this, can you please post those to?
I know @JanetNJ has a video of checking her kitty's BG level in her signature. Here's a video that I think I watched when I first started: . Here's a video I found real quick to give insulin: . I only watched a bit of that because I learned at the vet's office so I never had to look that one up. As for the air thing, I never did that when I had Gypsy, so I don't have any good info about that. If run across the thread though, I'll add it here! So nice of you to teach someone else how to test BG and give insulin!!!!
As far as whether or not you -have- to inject air, it isn't really crucial. You are working with a vacuum sealed container, so the purpose is to counteract negative pressure. If you pull the plunger through the syringe a few times to loosen it up, the meds will vacuum up into the syringe, because the air you put in there pushes the meds out. I'm not sure how this would work after using the vial without injecting air. We usually pull up a tad bit more than we need, since the dose is pretty small. We are more conservative in our approach, so if we pull up a dose that is too small, we never put the needle back in the vial. We just throw it away. It's probably unlikely that we would introduce contaminants into a vial if we reinserted, so it probably isn't necessary, but I like to be super safe. 1 unit or less is not worth the chance, to me. And if you are giving other meds that come in single doses, you can actually blow the lid off the vial and lose all of your medication by putting too much air in there. So, not only is it not necessary, but it can make a mess.
