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

If Part 1 was about getting my life back… Part 2 is about the moment life looked at me and said, “Cute. Now watch this.” Because this was supposed to be the bit where I carried on losing weight. Another few pounds. A few smaller clothes. A couple more ridiculous weigh-ins involving comparisons to farm animals and kitchen appliances. Instead… my body decided to release what I can only describe as the Director’s Cut. It actually makes me laugh now because if you’d asked me at t

So, after Thursday’s unexpected episode of “The Street That Never Sleeps,” complete with police cars, heart palpitations, an optical migraine and my Visible Band having what can only be described as an existential crisis, I was hoping Friday might decide to be a little kinder. It didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet, but it did at least stop throwing quite so many surprises at me. Friday - Running on Empty (and Electrolytes) Friday was another work from home day because I w

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

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

Weekly Weigh-In: Week 52 - My Scales Have Finally Decided To Apologise Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how unbelievably dramatic the human body can be? Honestly. If my body had a Facebook status, it would permanently read: “It’s complicated.” Last week, I stepped on the scales and was greeted by a number I definitely hadn’t invited. +6.6 lbs. Six point six. Not six ounces. Not “maybe I’ve had a big dinner.” A proper, full-on, “have I accidentally swallowed a small

Honestly… The last couple of weeks particularly but I would stretch as far as few months (- the temp), have felt like I’ve accidentally been selected for some new reality TV show called “Survive If You Can.” Temperature? Approximately 100 billion degrees. Sleep? Cancelled. PoTS? Thriving. Shoulder pain? Operating on a level previously only achieved by medieval torture devices. I genuinely think these have been the worst three weeks I’ve had in a long time. You know it’s bad w

One thing nobody warns you about when you’re diagnosed with a chronic condition is that you don’t just lose your health for a while. You lose little pieces of yourself. Not all at once. Not dramatically. They just quietly disappear. One by one. And before you know it, you wake up one morning and realise you’ve become someone you don’t quite recognise. That bit… That bit has been harder than I ever imagined. I miss being spontaneous. I miss saying, “Fancy going out?” without f

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…

There are certain moments in life that stay with you forever. Your first kiss. Passing your driving test. Buying your first house. And then… The day your feet decide they’re auditioning for Avatar. But I’m getting ahead of myself... By the beginning of April, I’d completely hit the wall. Not a gentle little bump. A full-speed, face-first collision. After months of telling myself I was “just tired”, my body finally staged a full-scale rebellion. I was signed off work for three

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

So there I was… Completely convinced I was just taking a little bit longer than everyone else to recover. Because that’s what we all do, isn’t it? We compare ourselves to absolutely everyone. “Oh, Susan at work had Covid and she was fine after ten days.” “My neighbour was back at the gym after three weeks.” “My cousin ran a half marathon six weeks later.” Brilliant. Good for Susan. Well done, neighbour. Congratulations, cousin. Meanwhile I was celebrating the fact I’d managed

Right… I think it’s only fair that before anybody says anything… I say it first. Yes. I know. I’ve completely abandoned you all. One hundred and fifty-six days. ONE. HUNDRED. AND. FIFTY. SIX. Honestly, I’ve ignored this blog for longer than some people stay on Love Island before getting dumped. Babies have been conceived, cooked and born. Governments have probably changed. My herbs have died, been replaced and died again. Even Facebook has probably assumed I’ve forgotten my p

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