Ten days ago, I woke up to a new milestone. I stepped on the scale and had entered a new “decade” as they call it. When I started Mounjaro on Aug 30th last year, I was near the top of a particular decade, and it took all of a month or so to drop almost 10 lbs to reach the next decade. Then it took over nine months to enter this new one. Now, the journey hasn’t been linear. I was near the bottom of that decade in mid-December, when the national shortage meant dropping to a dosage that didn’t help my body. I then spent the next five months moving to the right dose and back off of it due to shortages, and each of those cycles basically caused a fluctuation of about 3 lbs. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but every time I’d get close to entering this new decade, another health-system roadblock would cause problems.

I’ve now been on the correct dose for about six weeks (with one week completely off due to travel), and my body has finally stabilized and started moving slowly downward again. On the 11th, I saw the very top of that new decade. Two days ago, I’d dropped another pound, putting me at a second new milestone: exactly 20 lbs lost since I began Mounjaro. Compared to other people on these kinds of medications, 20 lbs in 9.5 months is nothing, but for me, for my body and its resistance to any kind of weight loss, this is wonderful. I’m extremely happy for it, especially as I’ve reached another kind of gateway, a pain threshold barrier above which I hurt constantly, below which I only hurt some of the time. I’ve reached a weight under where I lost my mobility in Nov 2021. I’m very close to the weight I was at when J and I took our road trip in Sept/Oct 2021 and I was hiking mad elevation day after day after day. It will be another two “decades” before I reach my pre-Ozempic weight from 2020, at which point the pain goes away entirely. It might be another year or longer before I reach that, and that’s okay. I’ll get there eventually.

(Center is right after I started Mounjaro. Left is -20 lbs, same shirt; right is also -20 lbs, one size down shirt in same design.)

In the meantime, I’ve started feeling better about moving more. It’s not tons, but getting on the treadmill for a mile walk doesn’t leave me in crippling pain for a week anymore. Last weekend, J and I went down to an interactive art museum called Hopscotch, where we walked and mostly stood around for 90 mins or so. While my hips hurt a little the next day, my feet were fine and I was still able to go about my day-to-day normal stuff without trouble. It doesn’t sound like a big deal to most people, but to someone who literally lost 95% of her mobility for almost a year, it feels good to not have to even think about whether something like this trip is possible again.

(same setup as above)

The last time my doctor and I checked my blood work was back in late March, at which point my labs looked better than they ever have. Even on the off-and-on wrong dose of this medication, it was improving some of the internal issues, particularly related to liver and kidney function (a genetic deterioration condition that can’t be cured, only managed). My next set of tests and visits will be early July, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what those say. I also see my rheumatologist tomorrow, and will probably have inflammation levels tested again. I’m hoping this new decade and pain-level-decrease will be reflected in decreased inflammation, too. We’ll see. That’s never been the case with weight loss before, but this isn’t just weight loss.

Anyway, I’m really happy to see these milestones. I still have a long way to go, but now it seems I have the tools and the right doctors. Fingers crossed that the insurance will see it that way once my Mounjaro coupon code runs out, because this medicine – completely aside from any weight loss benefits – has probably saved my life.