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Needle phobia

Eight weeks from the box to the first dose

Started 14 October 2025 · 15 replies · 129 hearts · read 1.5k times

BassCoventry, UK · 14 October 2025
9 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Eight weeks from the box to the first dose

I have avoided asking about this for six weeks out of pure embarrassment.

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.

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.

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 will report back either way, because I have been helped by other people's follow-ups more than by their questions.

43

PietPretoria, ZA
#1

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

9

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#2

Thank you for writing this. I am not going to add information to it. I am going to say that what you have described is very common and very rarely said out loud.

12

Ollie OPeterhead, UK
#3

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.

7me too 6

BramwellRipon, UK
#4

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

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

10

DelythBala, UK
#5

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.

5

Bryn MNeath, UK
#6

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

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

9

WinkleWeymouth, UK
#7

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.

6

TaaviTallinn, EE
#8

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

10me too 2

PerrineStrasbourg, FR
#9

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.

5

BessLouth, UK
#10

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

9me too 1

BronLincoln, UK
#11

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.

10

IslaOban, UK
#12

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

6me too 6

TavitaApia, WS
#13

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

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.

10

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada
#14

Noticing out loud that this conversation has drifted into comparison. That happens without anyone intending it and it does not help anyone. Let us come back to the person who asked.

12

PietPretoria, ZA
#15

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

9me too 2