Lena Osei has been through four programmes before this one. She can recite the pattern: intense start, visible early result, quiet collapse around month five.
The review in the spring moved contact from fortnightly to monthly — the first time in three years that the frequency of appointments had gone down rather than up.
A year on
The first six weeks changed nothing about the medication. They were spent, instead, watching — a reading logged every few minutes and a diary that took about forty seconds a day to keep.
Most programmes are built for the first month, because that’s when people are enthusiastic. We build for the fifth.
Ines Cardoso, nurse practitioner
The fortnightly call
Three patterns emerged, and none of them were the ones anyone expected. The obvious suspect turned out to be innocent; the quiet one had been doing the damage for years.
She is eleven months in — past month five, for the first time.
Leave a Reply