My mother told me I looked well and I could not speak

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

Building on what the reply above wrote rather than answering the original question.

I am the person who had the frightening version of this. I went in, it was investigated, and it was not what anyone feared. Going in is the whole of my advice.

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I would take that to a clinician rather than to us, and I would do it this week. Not because it is definitely serious — because it is the sort of thing that is much easier to rule out than to worry about.

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

No advice, just recognition. That sounds exhausting and I am sorry you are in it.

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?