Syringes and needles and vials, oh my!

Late last week I decided that I was tired of paying for the little miniature Sharps containers the pharmacy keeps sending me, so I decided that in order to reuse them, I would empty all the full ones I have (yeah, I'm stockpiling full Sharps containers, and I know I have a problem) and put the contents into a recently emptied extra-giant sized laundry detergent container.

So, I dragged all of my bursting-at-the-seams Sharps containers into my kitchen and dumped everything out onto my kitchen counter. (Yes, I know that seems sort of unsanitary, but I reasoned that I could bleach the kitchen counter afterwards...) Anyway, the more I dumped, the more morbidly fascinated I became. I felt a perverse sense of accomplishment looking at all of those spent vials of medication and used needles. (Yes, I know I'm cracked.)

Soon I found myself carefully sorting through the contents, almost feverishly piling syringes on one side, needles on another....

This, I thought, is what hundreds of needle pokes looks like. This is what ONE IUI and ONE IVF looks like. This is what thousands of dollars worth of drugs looks like.

And above, you can see for yourself what it looked like.

For the as yet uninitiated, clockwise from the top left: Empty vials of Menopur, progesterone in oil, and hCG; empty Follistim Pen cartridges; used Lupron needles; used needles; used Follistim Pen needle caps; and used syringes.