SURPASS-2 and the head-to-head design

Started 4 February 2025 · 24 replies · 266 hearts · read 3k times

NadjaBelgrade, RS · 4 February 2025

1.5 years ago

A question rather than an update: SURPASS-2 and the head-to-head design

Putting this here because I do not want to be sold anything, I want to know what is actually established.

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

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.

Anyway. Thank you for reading this far. Any experience gratefully received, and I promise to come back and say what happened.

JunoBrighton, UK

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.

11me too 6

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK

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

If any of this has landed close to home for you while reading, our support resources page lists the kinds of services worth finding. No obligation and no drama.

TheaBergen, NO

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?

JuniperMachynlleth, UK

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

XanBerlin, DE

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

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.

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

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.

OrphBath, UK

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

NilsUppsala, SE

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.

AbelAddis Ababa, ET

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.

OskarWarsaw, PL

#10

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.

FabianBasel, CH

#11

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

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.

NkemPort Harcourt, NG

#12

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

11me too 9

PádraigGalway, IE

#13

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.

CasperOdense, DK

#14

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

AnnaAthens, GR

#15

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

11me too 4

EphraimBrooklyn, NY

#16

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.

SaoirseKilkenny, IE

#17

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.

PrunellaBury St Edmunds, UK

#18

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

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

IzoldaVilnius, LT

#19

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

BlueStroud, UK

#20

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

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

PerrineStrasbourg, FR

#21

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

PatrickLimerick, IE

#22

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

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK

#23

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

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.

GilTel Aviv, IL

#24

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.