Thank you very much for your response, Dr Henry. (You write, "No one approach helps all--use of a vibrator before and/or afterwards and icing seems to be most helpful with my patients on Fuzeon.")

I was wondering if you could clarify: By "vibrator" do you mean one of those hand-held massagers for sore muscles you can buy at places like Sharper Image catalog? (That was what my doctor guessed you meant.) Do you mean the patient would apply the massager to the injection site before and immediately after the injection? (My doctor asked if I could check to make sure, since she wondered if there would be a problem with dispersing the medication too quickly if it was meant to be a bolus released into the bloodstream at a certain rate--or something like that.) I just wanted to make sure it was OK with the Fuzeon people before I did it.)

I was wondering, myself, could icing be used to cool down the site immediately before injection, and immediately after? Would that help at all? I'm just concerned, since, now that these swellings are getting so big it is becoming hard to find sites where it is possible to inject.

Again, thank you for your first response. There just doesn't seem to be much info on the practicalities of Fuzeon on the internet for patients, and the Fuzeon patient information line has said (in response to different questions), "Your guess is as good as ours--we just don't know much about it yet." So thanks very much for sharing your experience.

Yes a hand-held vibrator is what I was referring to. I don't have any concern about the effect of cold compressed on the absorption kinetics of the Fuzeon. KH