What the practice nurse showed me that changed it

Started 6 January 2025 · 23 replies · 248 hearts · read 3.8k times

TedIpswich, UK · 6 January 2025

1.5 years ago

What the practice nurse showed me that changed it — putting it in its own thread so it does not get lost in the check-in.

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with.

The physical part is manageable. What is wearing me down is the constant low-level monitoring of it, and I would like to stop doing that.

Something is going on and I would like to know whether other people have had it, mostly so I know whether to raise it or wait it out.

I will come back and say what my appointment produced, because I hate reading threads that stop before the answer.

IslaOban, UK

The anticipation faded for me at around week ten. Not gradually — I just noticed one week that I had done it without the preceding hour of dread.

SaraOslo, NO

I looked away for the first six months and then one day watched, and it was so much less than my imagination had been supplying.

SableCape Town, ZA

Building on what Sara wrote rather than answering the original question.

Something that helped: I stopped calling it an injection in my own head. Silly, and it took a surprising amount of weight out of the word.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

Thank you all. Somebody arriving embarrassed and being answered without a trace of it is the whole reason this circle is worded the way it is, and it takes everybody to keep it that way.

ZoëHackney, UK

I was three days late twice because I could not face it, and I want to say that here because I felt like the only person that had ever happened to.

Ozzy GWalsall, UK

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

My nurse talked me through the first one on the phone and stayed on the line, and I have never been more grateful for nine minutes of somebody's time.

BrackAlnwick, UK

What helped was letting it be a big deal at first rather than insisting it was not. Pretending it was nothing made it worse for about two months.

CatoAntwerp, BE

Cold hands made mine worse. Warming up for a minute beforehand genuinely changed the experience and I found that out by accident.

9me too 9

OrlaithDonegal, IE

Reading and nodding. Nothing to add, and I wanted you to know somebody had read it.

IvesPenzance, UK

#10

I did the first four in the bathroom sitting on the floor. There is no correct place and nobody is watching.

BrodyDunfermline, UK

#11

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

Somebody here suggested breathing out during rather than holding my breath, and it changed the physical experience noticeably. Very small thing.

PerrineStrasbourg, FR

#12

I still do not enjoy it, two years in. I do it in about forty seconds without thinking, and I do not enjoy it, and both of those are true.

OmarAmman, JO

#13

I found having everything laid out in advance helped enormously. Rummaging for things while working myself up was where it always went badly.

NadirCasablanca, MA

#14

My anxiety was mostly about doing it wrong. Once my nurse watched me do one and said it was fine, most of it evaporated.

OttaviaBologna, IT

#15

What I got wrong was doing it last thing at night when I was tired and low. Moving it to a Saturday morning changed it completely.

GavinDundee, UK

#16

No advice, only that you are not the only one who found this part hard.

7me too 9

GwynforLlanidloes, UK

#17

Please do not white-knuckle this for months in silence. There are practical things people can help with and none of them require you to be brave.

NylaNairobi, KE

#18

Picking up Gavin’s point rather than starting a new one.

Mine is now genuinely uneventful and I remember very clearly that it was not, and I would not want anybody to think it was uneventful from the start.

DelythBala, UK

#19

My partner did the first several. That is a completely legitimate arrangement and it is not a permanent one unless you want it to be.

TabbyMargate, UK

#20

What I would say is that the anxiety is not a sign you should not be doing this. It is a very common response to a genuinely unusual thing to ask of yourself.

TedIpswich, UK

#21

Mine got much worse for a fortnight after one that stung, and then went back to baseline. One bad experience can reset the whole thing temporarily.

EsiFacilitatorToronto, Canada

#22

A standing thank-you to anybody who returns to a thread with the outcome. Threads that simply stop are the ones that leave the next person stranded, and one sentence months later prevents it.

SaraOslo, NO

#23

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

The bathroom floor is a legitimate venue and I would like that on the record for anybody who thinks they are the only one.