How long is too long at one dose

Started 14 January 2025 · 18 replies · 192 hearts · read 2.4k times

BevanSwansea, UK · 14 January 2025

1.5 years ago

Something I have been sitting with: How long is too long at one dose Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

Long one, sorry. I have been chewing on this for a fortnight.

The thing that has surprised me most about this stage is how much of it is about other people rather than about me.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this stage was, and how long it went on for before it changed.

My prescriber has been fine, genuinely. The problem is that I get nine minutes twice a year and there is no version of nine minutes that covers a whole stage of this.

Thanks all. Genuinely. This circle has been better company than I expected to find anywhere.

DoraUtrecht, NL

I went back down a step once, deliberately, and it was not a failure. It was the most sensible fortnight of the year and my prescriber agreed without hesitation.

IdrisCardiff, UK

I do not think going slowly is universally better. I think it was better for me, and I am very cautious about turning my experience into anybody's rule.

14me too 4

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

I want to say plainly that stopping, pausing and restarting are ordinary shapes in this community and nobody who has done any of them owes an explanation.

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

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

The thing that finally let me relax was realising that staying put is an active choice with a reason behind it, not a lack of a decision.

GwynethAberdare, UK

Somebody in this circle described their pace as "geological" and I have thought about that phrase very fondly ever since. Mine is similar and nobody minds.

11me too 8

BrammyBelfast, NI

I found I needed about three weeks at each step before I knew what that step was like. Two weeks always gave me a half-formed impression that I then acted on.

HalCambridge, UK

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

I asked my prescriber directly what the cost of going slowly was and she said, in effect, time. That was a trade I was happy to make once it was stated plainly.

BroganCumbernauld, UK

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

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

I would gently add that slow is not the same as stalled. I moved twice this year, both times deliberately, both times after a conversation. That is progress with a handbrake, not no progress.

GwennoPwllheli, UK

#10

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

Whenever somebody new arrives worried about being slow, I say the same thing: nobody in this circle is going to be impressed by speed, and nobody is keeping score.

BevanSwansea, UK

#11

The schedule on the box is a default, not a deadline. My nurse said that in my second month and it reorganised how I thought about the whole thing.

DoraUtrecht, NL

#12

Going up slowly meant I could actually tell what each change did. When I moved faster at the start, everything happened at once and I could not attribute anything to anything.

IdrisCardiff, UK

#13

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

Coming back a year later to say the slow route held. I am still on treatment, still comfortable, still having ordinary weeks. That was the entire point of going slowly.

FlorrieBlackburn, UK

#14

I have been at the same step for eleven months, agreed with my prescriber, and it is the best decision I have made in this whole business. Slow was not a compromise, it was the plan.

12me too 9

GwendaEbbw Vale, UK

#15

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

Slow titration is not the cautious version of this. For some of us it is simply the version that works, and I have stopped framing it as a hedge.

8me too 8

GwynethAberdare, UK

#16

My prescriber and I settled on longer gaps between steps and shorter gaps between conversations, which I would recommend to anybody who finds the schedule stressful.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

#17

A reminder that this circle holds every stage at once, which is its strength and occasionally its difficulty. Somebody in year three answering somebody in week three needs to say which they are.

HalCambridge, UK

#18

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

What worked for me was agreeing a review point rather than a step-up date. We would look at it in eight weeks and decide then, which took the whole thing out of my head in the meantime.