I just wanted to quickly share my thoughts on how important I feel it is to record pertinent data.
I was diagnosed with crohn's 5 years ago and it recently dawned on me that I can't actually remember much of my medical history for the past 5 years. Of course I can generally comment on how I've been but I can't remember, for instance, how many weeks in 2007 I was on prednisolone for; or when I first tried mercaptopurine. Thinking about this a bit more I realised that when I am asked at my regular clinic questions like "how many bowel movements do you have per day?" I cannot be sure of an accurate answer. Often I'd be influenced by how I'd felt in the last day or two because I'd simply forget what had happened in the days and weeks prior to this.
So when my latest flare-up began I decided to start recording some data. I am now 18 weeks in and I am far from getting over the flare-up, in fact it's worse! But, I feel empowered by always having a clear idea in my mind of the current state of my disease and I feel in a position to give accurate information to my consultant, which can only be a good thing.
Here's what I record:
Number of bowel movements per day
Bristol Stool number of each bowel movement and at what time of day it was passed
All medication taken (particularly useful to recall when I missed a dose)
Faecal Calprotectin results
Number of bowel movements per week including how many contain blood.
I pull all of this data into an Excel spreadsheet and chart the progress. I have a 7 day moving average trend applied to the number of bowel movements (I do this since I can have, for example, 0 movements one day and 10 the next).
Daily reference to this chart helps me to keep a close track of where I am, and allows me to spot when things are changing (for better or worse). It also allows me to answer the "how many daily bowel movements?" with startling accuracy. I can confidently say "well my average for the last 7 days is 4.8".
I'm new to the forum and I'd be really interested to hear what other information people record and what benefits others have derived from doing this type of thing.
Cheers for now.
I was diagnosed with crohn's 5 years ago and it recently dawned on me that I can't actually remember much of my medical history for the past 5 years. Of course I can generally comment on how I've been but I can't remember, for instance, how many weeks in 2007 I was on prednisolone for; or when I first tried mercaptopurine. Thinking about this a bit more I realised that when I am asked at my regular clinic questions like "how many bowel movements do you have per day?" I cannot be sure of an accurate answer. Often I'd be influenced by how I'd felt in the last day or two because I'd simply forget what had happened in the days and weeks prior to this.
So when my latest flare-up began I decided to start recording some data. I am now 18 weeks in and I am far from getting over the flare-up, in fact it's worse! But, I feel empowered by always having a clear idea in my mind of the current state of my disease and I feel in a position to give accurate information to my consultant, which can only be a good thing.
Here's what I record:
Number of bowel movements per day
Bristol Stool number of each bowel movement and at what time of day it was passed
All medication taken (particularly useful to recall when I missed a dose)
Faecal Calprotectin results
Number of bowel movements per week including how many contain blood.
I pull all of this data into an Excel spreadsheet and chart the progress. I have a 7 day moving average trend applied to the number of bowel movements (I do this since I can have, for example, 0 movements one day and 10 the next).
Daily reference to this chart helps me to keep a close track of where I am, and allows me to spot when things are changing (for better or worse). It also allows me to answer the "how many daily bowel movements?" with startling accuracy. I can confidently say "well my average for the last 7 days is 4.8".
I'm new to the forum and I'd be really interested to hear what other information people record and what benefits others have derived from doing this type of thing.
Cheers for now.