Every night, before going to sleep, Claudine Muscat has to dilute medicine in sterile water, hook a syringe to a small pump and attach the needle to her abdomen.
For eight hours she has to allow the medicine to trickle slowly into her body as the pump makes a grinding noise every few minutes, sometimes waking her up. "I cannot sleep comfortably because of it," the 19-year-old University student said.
Ms Muscat has been enduring this nightly ordeal for 12 years, when she started receiving regular blood transfusions for thalassaemia, an inherited disorder of the red blood cells.
Although the blood transfusions are a lifesaver for the teenager, they lead to an iron overload the body is unable to get rid of. This makes the daily intravenous medicine a necessity to remove the iron that tends to get deposited in the vital organs and that could lead to heart failure, liver cirrhosis, diabetes and other fatal conditions.
"Sometimes, I end up with painful inflammation in my abdomen because of the syringe," she said.
The daily treatment means Ms Muscat cannot have a part-time job like many other University students or even go out regularly with her friends. "I cannot stay out late because I have to start the treatment."
Against doctors' advice, she regularly skips the treatment on weekends to go out with her friends. "I shouldn't but it's the only way I can go out and have some fun," she admitted.
Ms Muscat, who is studying to become a physics teacher, has also had to postpone her plans to go abroad on a student exchange programme because there is no way she could take all the necessary vials of medicine and sterile water with her. Even going away for a week requires a lot of pre-planning to make sure she does not run out of medicine midway through her trip.
But there is hope that, soon, Ms Muscat's life will change drastically and the nightly treatment will become a thing of the past after the government approved an alternative drug that does not need to be injected over an eight-hour period.
Deferasirox, which was approved for use in EU countries in 2006, comes in the form of a soluble tablet taken once a day.
According to a Health Ministry spokesman, the drug will be given free to 16 patients with a form of thalassaemia and anaemia. The government would be spending an extra €74,000 over and above the almost €260,000 that is currently spent.
Not only will it make Ms Muscat's life easier but she will be more likely not to skip the treatment.
"I cannot wait for it to be available so I can stop injecting myself daily," Ms Muscat said.
A New Zealand septuagenarian recently mortgaged his house to get a year's supply of the tablet after suffering from a sore stomach for years because of the injection, which he stopped having every day.
Generic specialist Christian Scerri said he expected compliance to go up dramatically when the drug becomes available.
"It is obviously so much easier to take a tablet than an eight-hour injection," he said, adding that the vast majority of the 16 patients who received regular blood transfusions, including children, skipped the treatment on weekends.
Dr Scerri said better compliance should avoid bigger health problems in the future because iron overload was detrimental for the vital organs. "It is an investment in their future health," he said.