Welcome To My Tirzepatide Journey! The Start of It All.

Hello! I'm Hailey and I'm excited to share my journey with compounded Tirzepatide. I started the medication on July 12th, 2024, but my actual journey started years before!

In 2021, I was hit with a barrage of curveballs all at once. In this one year I experienced my first ever loss of a family member (my uncle) that I had spent large amounts of time with. His death hit me very hard as I didn't get any closure whatsoever. Then came the death of his wife, my aunt, and this is when I broke. Other than my parents, she was the most important person in my entire life. I was able to call in to say my goodbye, and was informed that she passed away mere minutes later...she was waiting for me. I didn't know the human body was capable of the type of scream I let out when I read the message informing me. For the first year and a half after this, I honestly felt like I had died myself. My whole life I had always eaten very little everyday (maybe its an autism thing?) and after this I started eating even less. My intake of bubble tea (thanks San Diego), acai bowls, and bread increased though. Due to all of this, I finally started going to a Psycologist and a Psychiatrist.

The next issue in the weight gain ripple effect came from this decision, and that was being given a prescription for Effexor (Venlafaxine). If you go to the Effexor Reddit page, you will see a whole online community of people who experienced its worst side effects: rapid weight gain and weight that is nearly impossible to lose (even years later sometimes)! Not only did this antidepressent do absolutely nothing for me, it was after this that I began to notice my weight slowly increasing at every doctors appointment. I was switched to Wellbutrin (Bupropion) around 8 months later( thank goodness for the 300mg dose!!)

Then I got Covid-19 for the second time. This time around I honestly felt absolutely terrible and considered going to the hospital, but I didn't want to be around people who were even sicker. In the years since, I have not shaken the extreme fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, sleeping issues, muscle pain, and more that accompanies Long Covid. As someone who has already had lifelong chronic pain, fibromyalgia, asthma, chronic migraine, possible Ehlers Danlos (still trying to find a specialist), this took a toll on my body that is still ongoing. Energy for exercising? More like "whats this energy everyone talks about?"

Going back to the beginning of this story in 2021, I was living in San Diego due to being a Marine Corps spouse. That meant I had the oh so lovely TriCare (JK it's NOT) as my health insurance provider. They would not approve anything for weight loss and hardly wanted to cover any of my other medications. So, my weight loss journey took a pause until this summer, 2024.

Thanks so much for reading this far, please see my next post to learn about acquiring Tirzepatide and my first week experience!