Pain Journals

My Doctor recently brought up the subject of pain journal. Others have had questions on them too, and I hope y'all don't mind me bring this subject up as I have a lot of questions too...
1. How do y'all start your pain journals?
2. Do you write in it everyday or just weekly?
3. Do you write it or type it?
So sorry this is new to me and the doctor didn't explain it to me.
Any help would be appreciate and I sincerely hope it helps others here too...
Lots of soft Hugz to everyone and lots of well wishes for a painfree day.
Thank You
and I hope not to offend anyone with this, my apologies if I have!

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* Asthma
* Allergies
* Osteoarthritis
* Spinal Stenosis
* Mild DDD
* Enlarged
Pituitary Gland
* Fibromyalgia
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Patient: "I always see spots with my eyes"
Doctor: "Didn't the new glasses help?"
Patient "Yes, now I see the spots clearer"

I was hoping Chutz was going to chime in pretty quickly here.....she outlines it perfectly.

I do keep a pain journal, but I don't do mine every day (I find that my depression is worse if I focus on my pain like that too much). I will keep it for 10-15 days. (The doctor never reads the full thing anyway, it is mostly for me to be able to point out things to him).

I mark my pain level at baseline, what I did (or didn't do) to make it worse that day, what have I tried (ice/heat/stretching/TENS), did it help? What medication did I take, how much did it help? Then I have one last entry for TODAY'S PAIN SCALE 0-10.

By doing this, I found that on average my pain had actually been an average of 6-7, although I had been reporting "oh, I don't know, probably a 4 or sometimes 5." It seems we (or maybe its just me) minimize our pain to others, even the person who is helping us with the medication.

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Mochiah/a.k.a. Sue

cervical fusion 2006

L4-5 surgery with cages, plates, and screws in 2005

MEDS:  Fentanyl patch, Norco, Celexa, trazodone, and Flexeril

 

To handle yourself, use your head...to handle others, use your heart

 

I'm going to smile like nothing is wrong, act like everything is perfect, and pretend its not hurting me.

Chartreux:

Chutz will probably reply too, and I agree with Mochiah that she has great advice on this topic. I started keeping a pain diary too, and found a great one at the American Pain Foundation website. I hope it's okay to post that link here, but if it gets removed, just do a google search for the APF and then click on the APF Publications link. Hope this helps!

I printed this out and put it in a 3-ring binder that I carried with me throughout the day so that I could mark it when I noticed changes in my pain levels and how well my meds did or did not work.

Ry

Here is the link...

http://www.painfoundation.org/Publications/TargetNotebook.pdf

As I understand there are basically two kinds of pain journal, one meant as a psychological support to "write off" your pain, like a personnal diary;the other a detailed account meant to improve medical performance. I guess you mean the second one.

Taking into account the complexity of your medical situation, I think the best is to include as much information as possible. If your allergies for example are related to the weather, it might be interesting to include a weather summary as well.

I don't keep a pain journal as such, but all information is entered into various logs, usually kept by the staff. This is then used to draw long-term conclusions and make long-term predictions. To me it has proven to be extremely useful.

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Hello All!

Was wondering what everyone thinks about GoChi juice or Gogi juice for the Fibro?

Some ppl. say it helps them..

Thanks,

Donajean