How I explained pacing to a well-meaning GP

Started 8 July 2025 · 18 replies · 192 hearts · read 2.2k times

RonanBelfast, NI · 8 July 2025

about a year ago

How I explained pacing to a well-meaning GP Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

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

I have read the guides here, which were more useful than anything else I have found, and I still have a question they do not cover.

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.

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.

Sorry for the length. If anyone has been here, I would very much like to hear it.

AleksLjubljana, SI

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.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

Gently disagreeing with the opening post, or rather adding the other half of it.

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

HuwWrexham, UK

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

14me too 1

CloverTotnes, UK

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

LilPreston, UK

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.

TobinCork, IE

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

AshSunderland, UK

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

TallisEly, UK

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

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

BevanSwansea, UK

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.

9me too 4

BridieWexford, IE

#10

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.

PatrickLimerick, IE

#11

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

IdrisCardiff, UK

#12

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

11me too 9

HattieExeter, UK

#13

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

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.

CassWakefield, UK

#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.

OllieCardiff, UK

#15

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

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

LandoLeeds, UK

#16

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

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

#17

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.

OttolineEdinburgh, UK

#18

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

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.