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You may have noticed that I sometimes recommend keeping a pain diary. Basically a pain diary is a daily log that tracks your pain intensity as well as medications, therapies and other activities that may impact your pain. The pain diary can be a very useful tool in the diagnosis and treat...
I have found that keeping a pain diary is extremely useful for seeing patterns (ie
that I will have flare ups after shopping or driving) It is also helpful to compare my
memory with what I wrote. My memory is often incorrect. Using the data from the
pain diary can help me be accurate when answering my doctor's questions about my
pain. To save time, I use code letters in place of words, P - for Pain level, M for medications, E for emotional state, A for activities.
Jewels
I started using a pain diary many years ago even before chronic pain. I don't use the 1 to 10 scale tho. Just for me it 1 to 5. I never go to 1 or 5 so I swim between 2 and 4 .....I can go back to my old diaries for information . I use a daily timer and make a point to register all meds taken. I had an incident once during a night I took 3 times the amount of migraine medication ( aborter ) and Tyl #3 I was os scared now I can't do that because I have to walk down the stairs if I need meds and the book is with the meds on the top of them. It is very easy in severe pain to forget to have taken our meds or the time of it. Now being on morphine it tells me when and how many I do take.
Marie