Dr. Baxter has gotten feedback from a woman whose 79-year-old father was so averse to needles that he almost stopped his dialysis. With Buzzy, he continued the treatment. She says she has also heard from a woman who said the experience of giving shots to her daughter, who needs regular injections for an illness, went from a three-hour ordeal full of tantrums to a five-minute activity.
Carroll Turner, who runs a life sciences incubator and is a patient of Dr. Lovell’s, says he used to routinely put off taking his weekly Enbrel injection because of the pain of the injection.
Sometimes, “I just wasn’t up to it” or “just didn’t feel like it,” he says.
Since he started using Buzzy about two years ago, he’s been taking the injections at the same time every week.
“I don’t ever miss an injection now,” he says.
He rated the pain of the injection a 4 out of 10, with 10 being the worst imaginable pain, before Buzzy. Now, the pain is a non-issue, he says.
“With the Buzzy, there’s just no pain,” he says. “It’s not as unpleasant so you don’t think about it and you just go ahead and do it,” he says. “It takes the anxiety away.”
Thomas Collins is a freelance medical writer based in Florida.