Does the shorter needle actually help

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

the reply above — 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.