When my appearance became a topic at work

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.

I asked my nurse the same question and she said something I have repeated ever since: that the aim is to keep you on treatment, not to get you up the schedule.

Yes. All of this. I had the same in my third month and I remember thinking there was something specifically wrong with me, which there was not.

Mine lasted about seven weeks and then lifted over a few days. I cannot tell you why. I can tell you it lifted.

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

Different experience here, for balance. Mine did not improve and in the end I stopped, and that was the right call for me. Both outcomes exist.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.