Dear N.R.: Intramuscular injections are among the safest, and anyone can be trained to do them. However, things can occasionally go wrong.
Aspiration is the term for pulling back a little on the syringe before injecting to be sure you aren't in a blood vessel. It is extremely unlikely that you'll hit a blood vessel, and
the practice of aspiration is now discouraged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for injecting vaccines. However, aspiration is still recommended for medications that would be dangerous to inject into the blood vessel. Octreotide is not dangerous to give intravenously, so I would recommend against aspiration for her. I suspect that you may be aspirating hard enough that the syringe is getting blocked. If you do aspirate, a light touch is sufficient.