The waiter who quietly boxed it up without a word

Started 18 December 2024 · 24 replies · 275 hearts · read 4.6k times

OsgarKillarney, IE · 18 December 2024

1.6 years ago

The waiter who quietly boxed it up without a word Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

Here is where I am. The medication side has been more or less as described, and the part nobody prepared me for is everything around it: what to say to people, how to plan a week, and how to tell the difference between a thing to endure and a thing to raise.

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

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

DelphiThessaloniki, GR

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.

PerryCardigan, UK

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

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.

NoorFacilitatorSingapore

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

I want to slow this down a little. There are four different answers flying about and they are all somebody's real experience, which makes them true and not necessarily relevant to the person who asked.

26me too 9

GwilymCaernarfon, UK

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

NolCork, IE

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.

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA

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.

WystanCheltenham, UK

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

OttiHarrogate, UK

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

10me too 4

Bell ANorwich, UK

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

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

9me too 3

GildaTrieste, IT

#10

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.

AmbroseYork, UK

#11

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.

TavitaApia, WS

#12

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

WinkleWeymouth, UK

#13

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

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

OsgarKillarney, IE

#14

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.

9me too 6

DelphiThessaloniki, GR

#15

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

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

PerryCardigan, UK

#16

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

KateBelfast, NI

#17

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.

8me too 1

GwilymCaernarfon, UK

#18

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

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.

NolCork, IE

#19

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

10me too 4

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA

#20

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

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.

WystanCheltenham, UK

#21

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

OttiHarrogate, UK

#22

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.

NoorFacilitatorSingapore

#23

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

GildaTrieste, IT

#24

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

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?

8me too 6