Hi anyone and everyone. I have a question.

I was told I should keep track of my symptoms because it makes it easier to describe to others, track healing, and might be therapeutic? However, I find it really hard to do so.

When I feel like crap, the last thing I want to do is think about how I am feeling. I also hate reading things I write when I am in crisis because it makes me sad. But I can see how helpful it is to see that I did improve.

What are your thoughts? If you keep track of symptoms, how do you do it?

Good topic!

I did for about 12 months, everyday. Just on a wall calendar. I would rate my day AM and PM, I started to add little scribbles and various other notes to record my sleep pattern and key symptoms for that day. I found it quite useful for that period of time, but I have recently decided to stop. I think I just now want to focus on the day and not think too much about symptoms. Just concentrate on stringing enough days together until this is all over. Happy with that decision so far, but don't regret recording everything whilst I was doing it. Perhaps there is no right or wrong, so long as you find it helpful do it!

@yoshi4844 I think its good to track things because there's days where the wave makes me forget I've had good times and tricks me into thinking either I've not had a window for ages or I'm not getting better. Then I'll look back and see i did indeed have a window and things were indeed a lot worse back in April and May.

Im not sure if you have the evening calms but if you do I'd write then when its not so overwhelming. I'm also now having to write what I eat because I've lost 2 stone now and need to start tracking calories before I get more issues from not being able to eat much.

I stopped for about a week when I was feeling lighter and regretted it because when I was bad again I got all jumbled up trying to figure out what was when etc.

As always, sending love ❤️

@yoshi4844

I avoided it a long time too

Now I’m tracking certain symptoms through rating them at set times of day. I’m just giving them a number.

I’ve started tracking my symptoms just in a note on my phone. I didn’t for a while because I thought it would be too upsetting, but I eventually started for the same reason as @cherrysquid. I would have little windows here and there, then get dropped back into a wave and be convinced that I wasn’t getting any better. So tracking symptoms helps me to see that I am making (very slow) progress. It also confirms to me that I’m not just crazy because I can see all the physical symptoms I’m struggling with 😅

9 hours ago, yoshi4844 said:

Hi anyone and everyone. I have a question.

I was told I should keep track of my symptoms because it makes it easier to describe to others, track healing, and might be therapeutic? However, I find it really hard to do so.

When I feel like crap, the last thing I want to do is think about how I am feeling. I also hate reading things I write when I am in crisis because it makes me sad. But I can see how helpful it is to see that I did improve.

What are your thoughts? If you keep track of symptoms, how do you do it?

I hate giving voice to symptoms by writing them down and reaffirming them but at the beginning it is good to see if there are patterns. I think this is really important for women with their cycles because hormones play a big role.

But for me, I prefer a spreadsheet that lists the symptoms and then just writing a number 1-10 beside. If anything extra happens I add a side note. For example started B12, had a reaction or stressful day, fire in the building. Lol, my life.....🙏❤️

Edited July 14Jul 14 by LostinCanada

I've been tracking diligently many metrics including symptoms for over 630 days in a spreadsheet. This has enabled me to run different kinds of data analysis - for example do certain symptoms get worse shortly after I decrease my dose. And this in turn has made me feel much more confident about my taper.

I read a post last year on SA about taking lots of photos in WD. Especially of loved ones, days out etc because once this is all over you’ll look back at the photos and just remember the good times.

For me personally I can look back at any photo over the last few years and I’ll know exactly how I felt that day. I don’t know if anyone can relate to this but that acts as my mood tracker