Stumble It!Oct 12 2008
Keeping a Medical Journal
One of the greatest tools a person with a demyelinating disease can use when it comes to treating their disease is keeping a medical journal. It’s simple and quick to do, yet the impact it can have on how your demyelinating disease is treated is astounding.
What does it do?
Keeping a medical journal allows you to track your symptoms. There are two approaches to keeping a medical journal. You can:
- Track just your symptoms and how they change on a daily basis
- Track all of the following:
- Amount of food eaten, what kind, and when
- Amount of water drunk
- Activities (grocery shopping, doctor’s appointment, gardening, etc… )
- Amount of exercise
- Amount of sleep
- Medications and supplements taken
- Severity of symptoms
- Any observations on what made your symptoms immediately worse, better, etc…
Obviously the second choice, while being a little bit more time consuming, would give you and your doctor the best overall view of your health, what makes the symptoms for your demyelinating disease worse, and what makes them better.
Why is it important?
The biggest problem that faces people with demyelinating diseases is how often their symptoms can change. For some people, their symptoms will get noticeably better or noticeably worse fairly quickly. For others, the changes will happen gradually over time. Gradual changes can be especially difficult to deal with when you have a demyelinating disease. Because you get steadily worse over a long period of time, it can be extremely difficult to pinpoint when your symptoms began to worsen.
Also, most people with demyelinating diseases have a lot of doctor appointments. If you try to rely on solely on your memory when your doctor asks for details about your symptoms and how you’ve been feeling since the last appointment, you can forget to tell them something important. If your doctor doesn’t have all of the information on your overall health, they can’t come up with the best plan of care for you and your demyelinating disease. Even the smallest details can have a large impact on your treatment plan.
Things to keep in mind
Keeping a medical journal doesn’t have to be a time consuming experience. Take 15 minutes, each day, before you go to bed to jot down the things you’ve done that day, rate how your symptoms are, and make note of any significant changes or odd feelings.
When you go to your doctor appointments, bring the journal with you. Better yet, make copies to give to your doctor of the medical journal entries you’ve made since your last appointment. Those copies can then become part of your medical record.
My experience
I try to chronicle any significant changes in my symptoms on my computer. I’ve found it extremely helpful for me to read over past entries in order to get a gauge of how my CIDP and various CIDP related symptoms are doing. Admittedly, I could get much better about making my journal entries every day.
As a special note, I decided to file “Keeping a Medical Journal” in the Treatment category because it can impact how your doctor treats you and your demyelinating disease.
