Have you started using the pain scale yet? If not, check it out. Today's pain-free tip is to start keeping a pain journal.
Most doctors find it very helpful, and recommend it to their patients. If you're in the position that you haven't had a chance to meet a pain specialist yet (most of us don't until we've had chronic pain for many years... I met mine by chance while I was doing a pilgrimage to Santiago), starting to keep a pain journal now will enable both your MD and any future specialist to get a deeper understanding of your symptoms and provide you better treatment.
Typical entries in a pain journal would be:
- Date and place
- Pain levels throughout the day
- List of activities with times
- Amount of medicine taken
- Effects/side effects of medication
- Reflection:
- Did the pain limit your activities today? If so, how?
Try to keep it simple, even a very short entry is better than nothing:)
Contact CT Pain Foundation (email) to receive your own detailed Pain Notebook for free. The American Pain Foundation has a detailed Pain Notebook which you can download as a pdf and use the way it is. Or you can make your own, scrap book style, where you can paste in some mementoes of your patient-career, and hopefully someday you can look in it with wonder and think "Wow... I'm so glad that part of my life is over and I have no more pain today".
Puh, kjenner jeg blir sliten bare av å tenke på fylle ut skjemaer. Jeg har fylt ut så mange dager, måneder og år. Nå fyller jeg ut start-1mnd-3mnd i forbindelse med medikamentutprøvning. Men jeg kommer antakelig til å starte opp igjen med daglige etterhvert, det er tross alt et godt verktøy.
ReplyDeleteProblemet blir som regel at jeg etter noen mnd, går tilbake og ser "hadde jeg virkelig så vondt da? Jeg må ha overdrevet", haha.
Great blog Anna, I'm becoming addicted to your humor! Just thought you should know, the national pain foundation lets you keep an online personal pain journal on their site, it's pretty brief, but may be helpful for some, check it out:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nationalpainfoundation.org/