The fortnight I lost and what I learned

Started 2 June 2025 · 19 replies · 220 hearts · read 4.1k times

KeeleyBlackpool, UK · 2 June 2025

about a year ago

The fortnight I lost and what I learned Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Something is going on with my body and I would like to know whether it is ordinary.

What I keep tripping on is not the physical bit. It is the not knowing whether what I am experiencing is normal, and having nobody to ask who is not either selling something or frightened for me.

I have written down what has actually happened, in order, because I find that more useful than my summary of it.

My prescriber has been fine, genuinely. The problem is that I get nine minutes twice a year and there is no version of nine minutes that covers this.

Thanks all. Genuinely.

FitzLimerick, IE

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

WystanCheltenham, UK

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

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.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

Reading the opening post, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I will leave this open for a few more days and then add it to the circle's resources, because the answers here are better than anything I would have written.

RafeBordeaux, FR

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

7me too 2

CloverTotnes, UK

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

The phrase that unlocked my appointment was asking what specifically she wanted me to watch for. It moved us from reassurance to a plan in about thirty seconds.

BibiRabat, MA

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.

NkemPort Harcourt, NG

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

13me too 6

FionnualaDundalk, IE

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

QuinGuildford, UK

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

ClemmieNorwich, UK

#10

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?

12me too 1

HarlanDenver, CO

#11

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

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

BodhiByron Bay, AU

#12

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

BronteHaworth, UK

#13

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

MarnieAyr, UK

#14

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.

10me too 2

SamPortland, OR

#15

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

RonanBelfast, NI

#16

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.

NyalaAddis Ababa, ET

#17

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

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.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

#18

Before anyone offers a remedy: what has been described here is on the list of things that need a clinician today rather than a thread. I am going to be firm about that, kindly.

BramSheffield, UK

#19

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.