Question list · The visit

Bring your questions. Leave with a plan.

A visit is a place to talk through your goal, your health history and what happens next. It is fine to come to the visit before choosing a treatment.

A blank notebook, screen and chair made from torn paper, arranged as a calm place to talk — Leave a little space for questions.

What getting care involves

Ask how the first health check works. Is it a conversation, an online exchange, or an in-person visit? Ask what happens after you share your health history.

Discuss the plan for a prescription, the pharmacy that would fill it and the follow-up.

As of September 2026, national guidance from medical boards says an online medicine menu cannot take the place of a real check of your health.

Under that guidance, you must have a way to put your own follow-up questions to the person providing your care.

This guidance recommends how visits should work; your state sets the legal rules the person treating you must follow.

Who will check my health, and how can I ask that person questions?

Bring the parts of your history that matter

The medicine’s official instructions and warnings, called its label, list these topics to discuss, as of September 2026.

Whether you or a relative has had medullary thyroid cancer (MTC), a rare thyroid cancer.
Whether you have MEN 2, the name of a rare condition that can be passed from a parent to a child.
Past pancreas or gallbladder problems, very slow stomach emptying, or diabetes-related eye problems.
Serious allergies, pregnancy plans, birth control pills, other diabetes medicines and planned surgery.

Source: Zepbound label, National Library of Medicine

Ask relatives about the names above, or bring family medical records that mention them. If you do not know, say so at the visit.

Bring a list of the medicines you take and any questions you do not want to forget. Ask which tests or records, if any, are needed for your health check.

Talk about the difficult parts, too

Nausea (feeling sick), vomiting, diarrhea and constipation were common problems in Zepbound’s weight trials.

The Zepbound label checked September 2026 warns that some stomach problems can be severe and fluid loss can harm the kidneys.

Both tirzepatide labels carry a boxed warning, their strongest type of warning, about thyroid tumors found in rats.

Whether tirzepatide causes those tumors in people is unknown.

The labels say this medicine must not be used if you or a relative has had MTC, the thyroid cancer named above.

It must also not be used if you have the inherited condition MEN 2 or a known serious allergy to the medicine or its ingredients.

Tirzepatide can affect how well birth control pills work, according to the Zepbound label checked September 2026.

Ask whoever writes your prescription to explain how the label’s instructions for extra birth control apply to you.

A note to take along

Questions for the visit and the follow-up

Which medicine are we discussing, and will it come in an injection pen or a small bottle?
What in my health history affects whether this is an option?
What tests or in-person checks might be needed?
Who can I reach about symptoms between visits?
How will we review whether the treatment is helping?
What would the plan be if I needed to stop?
What costs continue between visits?

Copy the questions into a note, or bring this page. Add the question that is worrying you most.