Constipation is running my life and I am embarrassed

Weeks one to twelve for me were: strange, quiet, difficult, difficult, better, fine, fine, tired, tired, fine, good, and then a week where I forgot I was doing it at all.

To the opening post rather than to the thread: Sindri, this is my version of it.

I found the second month harder than the first because the novelty had worn off and it had turned into something I had to keep doing. That is a very ordinary shape.

If you are in the middle of this stretch and everything feels unresolved, that is the correct feeling for the middle of it. Nothing is meant to be resolved yet.

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.

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.

I have nothing to add and I did not want to leave it unanswered.

Recognition rather than advice, if that is any use at all.

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.

Weeks three and four were when I stopped waiting for something to happen and started noticing things that already had. Different way of looking, same twelve weeks.

This is why I read the boring weeks. Thank you for the boring weeks.

I reread my own notes from week two recently and I sounded genuinely frightened. I had forgotten that. Twelve weeks does more than I gave it credit for at the time.

Blue, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

I had two completely uneventful weeks in the middle of this stretch and I found them oddly hard, because I had nothing to report and felt as though I should have.

What I would tell my week-one self: the first twelve weeks are not a trial you pass. They are a period during which you find out how this works for you specifically.

Coming back at the end of my twelve weeks to say it was mostly ordinary. I wanted to leave that here, because when I was in week three every account I found was dramatic in one direction or the other.

Halfway through I stopped reading anything outside this site and my own prescriber's advice, and my anxiety dropped noticeably within a fortnight. That was my single biggest change.

Something in the middle of this stretch will probably surprise you, and it will probably not be the thing you have been bracing for. Mine was sleep. I had prepared for everything except sleep.