Patient stories
Each story follows one person through the part of treatment they found hardest to prepare for — the plateau, the invoice, the week they nearly stopped.
Every person on this page is invented. These are illustrative composites written to demonstrate the design — not interviews, not testimonials, and not accounts of real people. Nothing here describes what treatment will do for you.
Nine months in, after two false starts with different providers
I spent months trying to work out which questions I should even be asking. The difference came when I started writing down what actually happened, week by week.
Stopped at month five over cost, restarted with a different provider
I had budgeted for the number I was quoted. Four months later the number was different, and every part of that difference had been disclosed to me somewhere.
Twelve months, including a nine-week stretch where nothing moved
Somebody should have told me at the start that there would be about two months where this looked like it had stopped working.
Six months, after asking to be referred rather than assembling advice herself
I had built an entire eating framework out of search results. It took one appointment with someone qualified to establish that most of it did not apply to me.
Stopped in week four of a first attempt; restarted a year later
The hardest week was also the week I was furthest from anyone I could ask a small question.
Four months contesting an eligibility decision that turned out to be a supply issue
I spent four months proving I qualified for something nobody had any of. One question at the start would have saved all of it.
Eight months, most of it not reporting things he assumed were normal
I had been told it was common. I took that to mean I should not bother anybody about it.
Five months, with a one-page summary at every appointment
One page, on the desk, where we could both see it. It is not a technique. It just makes running out of time an obvious decision rather than an accident.
Two providers in fourteen months; the same treatment, different experience
The medicine was identical. Everything that differed was what happened in the weeks when I was not in an appointment.
A year of good numbers and a conversation she kept not having
Everything on the review form had improved. The thing I wanted to talk about was not on the form.
