Self assessment is never easy, and it’s certainly not accurate. This can be true for the way we look, the way we act, and the way we speak. Lately, I’ve been thinking about it in terms of my health.
First, there’s the vague stuff. If I’m feeling good on the day I see the doctor, I’ll focus on my progress. If I feel bad, I’ll focus on 
the setbacks. That’s just natural. At 3pm Tuesday the doctor may make one assessment of me, but at 11am Wednesday it would look completely different. It’s hard not to have a selective memory based on mood, especially when brain fog is already an issue.
Of course, that also doesn’t account for the inability to differentiate periods of time in my mind. How have I felt in the last 2 months compared to the 2 months before? Are they kidding? In the middle of March, I’m supposed to compare January to last November? On my best days before brain fog I could sometimes use association techniques to make a wildly inaccurate comparison. But now? Forget it!
Then there are the more specific ratings, like the pain scale. We all know the pain scale, right? You tell your doctor how much pain you have, with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you can imagine. They always seem to ask about the pain I’m experiencing that day, even though that day could be an aberration. And talk about subjective! I explained to my rheumatologist the other day that the pain started when I was a kid. After all these years, after experiencing new levels of pain, after gaining the perspective of an adult, of course my pain scale has changed. My 17-year-old pain 8 is now only a pain 6 or so. I report a lot of pain 2 and pain 3 days now, and even some pain 1 days, but the same pain 15 or 20 years ago would have rated at 4 or 5. There’s no good way to reflect that in the medical record. And there’s no objective test for it.
I’ve heard of people using a similar scale for fatigue, but my doctors haven’t suggested it yet. For that, they ask about how much activity I can do in a day and how I feel afterwards. Again, there’s a lot of selective memory there. I don’t like it, but I can’t help it. I’m only human, after all. And it’s just all too easy to forget about the walks I accomplished, or to ignore the days I wasn’t able to leave the house.
I’ve had three medical appointments in the last week, and I think they each got incredibly different views on my health. Sure, it’s partly because they each know different things about me, we have different histories, and they focus on different things. And it’s partly because of the time of day I saw each, the distance I had to travel, the stress surrounding the visit, and how much activity I had done in the days prior.
As always, it comes down to the idea that we just need to do our best. And that’s what I’m doing. I just hope it’s good enough.
Chronic Rants 