Reading SELECT as someone with diabetes and heart disease

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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