If you’d told me a year ago, while I was standing in my kitchen having a full-scale emotional breakdown over a tiny injection pen, that twelve months later I’d be writing an anniversary post about losing nearly 36 pounds while also learning how to live with Long Covid, PoTS and Orthostatic Hypotension, I’d have laughed. Then I’d have asked if you were absolutely sure you had the right person. Because my plan for this year was beautifully simple. Lose some weight. Feel healthi

There are moments in life when you know something significant is happening. Getting married. Buying a house. Accidentally replying all to an email. And then… Standing in your kitchen, holding what can only be described as the world’s most expensive tiny pen, wondering whether you’re about to become a healthier version of yourself or accidentally inject your spleen. That was me. One year ago. One tiny jab. One enormous amount of unnecessary drama. Because if you’ve been here f

If anyone had asked me how this week was going to go, I’d probably have confidently replied, “Oh, fairly quiet I think.” Which, as we all know by now, is basically the equivalent of standing in the middle of a field during a thunderstorm waving a metal umbrella around shouting, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Because this week had absolutely everything. A headache that deserved its own NHS referral, meetings about meetings, oversized red blood cells, another Mounjaro ja

Weekly Weigh-In: Week 53 - The Incredible Shrinking JABatha Strikes Again Weekly loss: 2 lbs Total loss: 35.5 lbs (16.1 kg) Well… Would you look at that. Another two pounds have packed their bags, left without paying rent, and disappeared into the witness protection programme. At this point I’m convinced my fat is secretly emigrating. When I got ill with Long Covid, PoTS and OH, life threw me a plot twist that absolutely nobody ordered. One minute I was happily jabbing away o

You know those weekends where you think: “This is it. This is the comeback weekend.” Yeah… Mine submitted a complaint to management. Saturday (Day 360) I remember waking up during the night with my heart absolutely galloping. Not because my body had decided to malfunction for absolutely no reason (although that’s always a possibility these days). No. I’d had the most ridiculous dream imaginable. There was apparently a burglar hiding in my wardrobe. Not stealing anything. Just

You know when people say, “Things come in threes”? Cute. My body clearly misunderstood the assignment and went for the unlimited subscription. At this point I don’t wake up in the morning… I log in. Every day starts with me wondering which part of my body has submitted a complaint overnight. Heart? Blood pressure? Brain? Shoulder? Eyes? Energy? Let’s spin the Wheel of Medical Misfortune and find out! Honestly, if my autonomic nervous system worked in an office, HR would’ve ma

Well… If you’ve made it this far… Firstly… Congratulations. This is the fial part of a missing JABatha story. Secondly… I think you probably deserve a Hydrava. Or a gin. Possibly both. If somebody had told me back on Day 195 that this would be my life 156 days later… I’d have laughed. Then probably thrown something at them. Because none of this was part of the plan. The plan was simple. Lose the weight. Come off Mounjaro. Enjoy my new wardrobe. Go on holiday. Dance behind the

Something changed in me over the last few months. Not physically. Mentally. And I don’t think I admitted it to myself until very recently. I’ve always been the person who gets on with things. Problem? Fix it. Feeling rubbish? Push through. Someone tells me I can’t do something? Watch me. I’ve always been stubborn. Probably too stubborn. It’s one of my best qualities. It’s also one of my worst. Because you can’t out-stubborn your own nervous system. Believe me… I’ve tried. For

Let’s just change the subject for a minute. Because as if PoTS, Orthostatic Hypotension, Long Covid, hospital appointments, blue feet, compression socks and my body’s complete refusal to cooperate weren’t enough… There’s also the tiny little matter of… Mounjaro. Remember that? The injection that this entire blog started with. The injection that changed my life. The injection I swore I was coming off. Yeah… About that. If you’ve followed this blog from Day One, you’ll know I’d

Ok let's talk about it. So I officially have PoTS. Excellent. Now what? This is the bit nobody tells you. Getting a diagnosis feels like crossing a finish line. You spend months trying to work out what’s wrong with you, finally get an answer and think… “Right… brilliant. Now fix me.” Except… There isn’t really a fix. There’s management. There’s learning. There’s trial and error. There’s discovering your body has become more high maintenance than a Range Rover. Nobody actually

So… Apparently I have PoTS. And Orthostatic Hypotension. Brilliant. Tiny problem… I hadn’t got the faintest idea what either of those actually really meant and how those conditions are going to affect my life going forward. When the cardiologist first said “PoTS”, I genuinely thought he’d said pots. As in… Flower pots. Plant pots. The sort of thing you buy from B&Q because you’ve convinced yourself this is definitely the year you’re going to become a gardener. Spoiler alert…

So… By this point I’d accepted that my body had become… quirky. You know how every family has that one slightly eccentric relative? The one who microwaves fish in the office, owns fourteen ornamental owls and still pays for everything by cheque? Well… Apparently my nervous system had become that relative. Completely unpredictable. Slightly embarrassing. And absolutely refusing to behave itself. The thing that really started confusing me was the fact there didn’t seem to be an

Weekly Weigh-In: Week 51 - The Scales Have Chosen Violence! Well…It finally happened. After 156 days of what can only be described as surviving rather than living, the scales have looked me square in the face and gone… “Excuse me, we’d like to lodge a formal complaint.” +6.6 lbs. SIX POINT SIX. Honestly…I’ve had less dramatic break-ups. Now before anyone starts dialling the Mounjaro Police or revoking my membership to the GLP-1 Appreciation Society… Can we all just remember w

Strap in. Cancel plans. Text your loved ones. Hydrate aggressively. This post is going to be LONGER, LOUDER, UNHINGED, UNEDITED, and EXTREMELY JABatha. Right. FIRST THINGS FIRST. Admin. Housekeeping. Clearing the air. YES - I am aware I vanished. NO - this was not a creative sabbatical. NO - this was not a “strategic pause”. NO - this was not a soft launch of mystery, intrigue, or personal rebrand. NO - I did not go on Eat Pray Love. If anything, I went on Cough Wheeze Dissoc

Weekly Weigh-In: Week 27 - AKA: The One Where My Brain Took Annual Leave and My Body Kept the Receipts Well hello there. It’s me. Alive. Mostly. Emerging slowly from the fog like a Victorian child with a fainting couch and a dramatic sigh. Yes. SIX WEEKS. Six whole weeks since my last blog post. Week 21 feels like a previous era. A different season of life. Possibly a different government. Before anyone panics: I did not fall off the planet, I did not rage-quit the internet,

Ahhh yes… Thursday and Friday. Days 148 and 149. Two days so weird and chaotic they deserve their own Netflix mini-series. Or at least a three-part BBC documentary narrated by David Attenborough: “Here we observe the modern woman in her natural habitat… at home… staring blankly at her laptop… praying for WiFi stability.” Because babes, I worked from home BOTH days. Me. WFH. Back-to-back. THURSDAY: DAY 148 — Emails, Retching & Riveting Glamour I woke up like a Victorian child

WEIGH-IN WEEK 21: THE POLISH PIEROGI PARADOX (aka: How I Lost 0.5 lbs While Acting Like a Competitive Eater in Kraków) Week 21. 10 mg jab. 0.5 lbs down. Total loss: 32.2 lbs / 14.6 kg. And honestly? After the last week, I should’ve been gaining the weight of a mid-sized toddler, not dropping half a pound. Because let’s be very clear: I did not behave like someone on a weight-loss journey. I behaved like someone unleashed into Poland with the emotional stability of a toddler a

Oh, where do I even begin? These last three days - Monday to Wednesday - have been a swirling tornado of snots, fevers, Zoom meetings, digestive rebellion, and existential dread. Apparently, I brought home a little souvenir virus from my recent Poland trip, because why wouldn’t I? Christmas markets are basically human anthills, and somewhere between dodging drunken Santas and elbowing my way to the mulled wine stall, I caught something that has now turned me into a sad, sligh

A very very long blog post, featuring: Poland, pierogi, panic, over 20k steps a day, history, sausages, ancestral ghosts, and one terrified British boyfriend meeting The Parents. My loves, gather close. This is the Holiday Edition of The Mounjaro Chronicles. The Odyssey of JABatha Christie. The almost 9-Day Polish Whirlwind Tour, where I: dragged my British boyfriend across four cities, walked more steps than a Fitbit employee on a performance review, ate more food than shoul

My darlings, welcome to Week 20, also known as: “The Episode Where JABatha Christie Cannot Weigh Herself Because She’s Been Busy Dragging Her British Man Across Poland Like a Cultural Hostage.” Yes. For the first time in 20 weeks of obsessively stepping on a scale like it’s a personality test, there is no weigh-in. None. Zero. Zilch. Even my Apple Watch was looking confused like, “Girl? Are we… done? Is this freedom?” But listen - this week was a special one. THE GRAND POLISH