Patches, gel, and absorption questions

Started 4 July 2025 · 19 replies · 190 hearts · read 2.2k times

NyreeChristchurch, NZ · 4 July 2025

about a year ago

Something I have been sitting with: Patches, gel, and absorption questions Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

I have had this diagnosis for a long time and none of the general advice quite fits me.

I am aware some of this may be nothing. I would still like to know whether other people have had it, because I have spent a fortnight assuming I am the only one.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this was, and how long it went on for.

Anyway. Thank you for reading this far. Any experience gratefully received, and I promise to come back and say what happened.

Birdie BWhitstable, UK

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

LeniLeipzig, DE

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.

GwynforLlanidloes, UK

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

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

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

If any of this has landed close to home for you while reading, our support resources page lists the kinds of services worth finding. No obligation and no drama.

HalCambridge, UK

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

Coming back to this a fortnight later to say it settled. Leaving the update because I hate reading threads that stop.

LlianCarmarthen, UK

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.

10me too 2

MarnieAyr, UK

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

HollyBath, UK

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

AbramAmsterdam, NL

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

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.

HannahSheffield, UK

#10

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.

WellsChester, UK

#11

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.

BettinaGraz, AT

#12

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.

FenellaCirencester, UK

#13

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.

10me too 3

CoralieMarseille, FR

#14

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

NyreeChristchurch, NZ

#15

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

Birdie BWhitstable, UK

#16

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

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.

LeniLeipzig, DE

#17

For what it is worth, the trial data on this is thinner than the confidence of the internet would suggest. Worth knowing when you read the posts.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

#18

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology.

20me too 8

BirdieMargate, UK

#19

Yes to the burping. It is real, it is unbeautiful, and it does settle.

12me too 2