The first step up knocked me flat for three days

My most useful early habit was writing down the question the moment it occurred to me, because by the appointment I could never remember what had been worrying me at eleven at night.

The first twelve weeks are also when you find out what your prescriber is like when you ask a question between appointments. Mine was much more available than I expected and I had spent weeks not asking.

Something that helped me through the middle stretch: I stopped judging a week by the last day of it. Fridays were always the worst read on how the week had actually gone.

Coming back to what Bramley wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

My week six was much harder than my week two, which I had not expected at all. I had assumed it got monotonically easier and it does not always go in that direction.

I would gently say that twelve weeks is not long. It felt endless from inside it and looks very short from here, and both of those readings are honest.

Here, reading, and glad you posted.

Do not compare your week seven to somebody else's week seven. I did that for about a month and it cost me a fortnight of unnecessary worry.

Twelve weeks in I finally understood that the steep part is the learning, not the medicine. Once I knew how my own week worked, everything got quieter.

The bit I underestimated was how much of the first twelve weeks is logistics — collections, dates, where things live, who knows. The physical side took up much less of my attention than the arrangements did.

A small thing that made the whole stretch easier: I set one calendar reminder for the day before, not the day itself. Being reminded on the day was always slightly too late to be useful.

I asked here in week five whether I should be further along, and somebody replied asking further along than what. I did not have an answer, and that was the answer.

Reading Stefan, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What changed for me around week ten was less physical than practical. I finally had a routine that fit my actual week rather than the week I wished I had.