EndoResFellow said:

PSA: get baseline labs BEFORE starting baseline bloodwork therapy.

True, and it depends on a baseline nobody has stated. Without knowing where someone started, the same number can be an excellent result or a disappointing one.

dave_SLC said:

One addition: if the lab changes analytical platform between your draws, the comparison breaks and nobody tells you.

That reframing is the part I needed. Sending this to two other people who asked me the same thing last week.

EndoResFellow said:

PSA: get baseline labs BEFORE starting baseline bloodwork therapy.

This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. Pushing back on the anecdote-stacking. Twenty people reporting the same thing is twenty samples from the same self-selected pool, not twenty independent confirmations.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. One practical note: write down what you did and when, before you need it. Reconstructing a timeline from memory three months later is how people end up unable to answer the one question that would have resolved it.

Moderator note: good thread. Keeping it here rather than moving it, because the question is general enough to be useful. Report rather than reply if it drifts again.