Beyond the Pain

Memory is a funny thing. Well, at least mine is.

You think you remember how it was but in fact it wasn’t quite that way at all.

Here’s an example from my life. For years I’ve remembered the time whilst I was
in graduate school as the best ever. I was learning, phenomenally creative,
madly in love, energized, busy, making money, and active. Life was good.

And, it was. However, I’ve always remembered that time as being free of SAD.
S.A.D. is the acronym for Seasonal
Affective Disorder a mood disorder caused by the season shift in sunlight.
Many of us who live north of the 49th suffer from it, to various degrees. I
didn’t realize I had it, in spite of obvious symptoms all along, until 1995.
Then, because I had started tracking trends in my journal, I realized this
pattern. I then went out a bought a light box and began daily treatments. Light
therapy stimulates the brain and supplies the sunlight we crave. Currently, I
use a portable LiteBook.

Back to grad school. As I said, I had ‘remembered’ grad school as being free of
depressive episodes. Today I decided to pull out my journal for 1988. Q’uelle Surprise!
As I leafed my way through the months it became readily apparent that the
depression (low energy) vs. high energy cycle I identified in 1995 was there in
1988.

I’ve been journaling since 1984. Now, 21 years later I have thousands of pages
of writing (in 1990 I switched to writing on the computer) that records my
lows, highs, anger, joy, questions, answers, and the emotions of my life.

I’m always amazed when I go back and read stuff from 10 or 20 years ago.

And, it’s been my journaling that’s helped me uncover ‘secrets’ that have
helped me reduce my pain.

I currently work on contract to the Alberta Medical Association. My work
as a Change Management resource exposes me to a lot of physicians. Most are my
clients: family doctors, surgeons, and other specialists who need help managing
the change that comes with introducing new office systems.

Occasionally I meet the physicians who are part of the organization that
manages the program that employs me. Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting
one of our board members who was reviewing the history of the program. As
someone who suffers from a ‘syndromal illness’ I
was struck by his comment that ‘we’ (that is medicine) had figured out causes
and cures for most of the ‘straight forward’ illnesses. And, that now Electronic Medical
Record (EMR) systems were needed to track and analyze the masses of data
required to track trends and connections and be used for research.

His comment made me think about the fact that what helped my getter better was
the data I gathered about my activities and symptoms. For more than 4 years
I’ve been doing a daily log of sleep, exercise, weather, illness symptoms, GI
symptoms, ENT symptoms, and others. This data has enabled me to see trends and
connections.

For example, I recently read an article on the value of Vitamin D and thought
I’d give it a try. The data from 2 trial runs clearly showed that when I took
it I suffered nausea. Without the log I may have made the connection. However,
with the log I was able to make the connection more quickly. By the way, I
talked with a friend who suffers pain and she too had tried Vitamin D and found
she couldn’t tolerate it.

So, yes I can see that getting more data on patients can be a good thing. The
good news is that you don’t have to wait for your doctor or clinic to start
gathering data about you. You can gather data about yourself to help you find
connections — and cures!