> In my experience, I have had good responses from doctors when I not only
> told them verbally of my pain and how it crippled my daily life....but when
> I also gave my own written record of the pain and the crippling for my
> chart. I felt that it served a couple practical purposes for me.
I use one of those daily journals that has a week's spread on each two facing pages. I keep track of my health issues there, the weather, and what I accomplish -- or don't.
This has proved invaluable for both me, in understanding my illness, and my doctors. It has brought me out of a chaos of pain and feeling unable to manage to putting some order to illness.
Surprisingly, there are days when I have much less pain, days when I accomplish more than I thought I could.
Kate
-- Kate Murphy katemm@mindspring.com