Ice, then nothing, then done

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.

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.

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

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

the reply above said something I want to sit with for a second.

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?

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

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.

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

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

It got worse before it got better for me, which I wish someone had said. About ten days of worse.