Month four and the shower drain

Started 16 April 2025 · 15 replies · 144 hearts · read 1.4k times

MargueriteQuebec City, CA · 16 April 2025

1.3 years ago

Something I have been sitting with: Month four and the shower drain Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

Before anyone says it: yes, I have an appointment booked. I would still like to hear from people who have had this.

I want to describe this accurately rather than politely, because the polite version is what I said at my last appointment and it got me nowhere.

I have had a fortnight of this and then three good days and then another fortnight, and the pattern is the bit I would most like to understand.

Four is the honest number. I nearly rounded it in the title and then decided that rounding is how these things stop being useful to anybody.

No advice needed if you would rather not. Recognition is genuinely enough.

MairéadMayo, IE

Mine was patchy rather than general and that turned out to be a different question worth asking about specifically. Please do describe the pattern accurately.

12me too 1

GroverPortland, ME

What kept me going was reading the older threads here where people posted at the start and again a year later. The year-later posts are the useful ones.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

Speaking plainly as a facilitator: none of this is medical advice, none of us is qualified to give any, and that limit is what makes the rest of what we do honest.

WinnieCarlisle, UK

I wore it up for six months and nobody noticed anything, which I found simultaneously comforting and slightly annoying.

FabianBasel, CH

I found the counting worse than the shedding. Once I stopped looking at the plughole every morning the whole thing became much smaller.

WystanCheltenham, UK

Marking that I am here, in case that counts for anything today.

DillyNewport, UK

Fabian said something I want to sit with for a second.

Somebody here described the shedding phase as grieving something small and constant, and that was exactly right and I had not had words for it.

BlySheffield, UK

What I would say to anybody at the start of it: it is very unlikely to be permanent, and it is also completely reasonable to be upset while it happens.

6me too 2

OsmanAnkara, TR

What my GP checked was ferritin, thyroid and B12, and one of them was low and worth correcting regardless. Worth asking for, in my experience.

PerrinNice, FR

#10

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

I cut mine short during the worst of it, which I resisted for weeks and then found enormously freeing. Less to lose visibly, less to notice.

AnnikaStockholm, SE

#11

Mine slowed and stopped without me doing anything at all, over about ten weeks. I had tried four things by then and I do not believe any of them did it.

OttoPrague, CZ

#12

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

I asked about it at a review half expecting to be dismissed and instead got a proper explanation, a blood test and a plan. Worth asking.

GudrunAkureyri, IS

#13

The thing that helped was a photograph at the start, which I hated taking and which meant I could see the regrowth six months later rather than guessing.

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK

#14

Gently: nobody in this circle is being dramatic. A symptom that is taking up your whole week is worth raising, and this circle will never tell you it is too small.

20me too 1

CoralieMarseille, FR

#15

I have read this twice now. Thank you for writing it.