Chronic Rants

When did I start feeling crappy? Was it two days ago? Last week? When’s the last time I was glutened? When did I last need to use a cane or crutches to get around my apartment? When did I adjust that medication? These things would be hard enough to remember under the best of circumstances, but add in brain fog and days on end without with the structure of a full time job and suddenly it feels impossible to remember with any accuracy. Thankfully, I have my spreadsheet.

It feels like I started the spreadsheet recently, but actually it was September 2013. (Wow, 7 years already!) I had been researching how to treat my various health conditions, and tracking symptoms and medications was recommended so strongly in multiple books that I finally gave in and did it. There are many apps that can be used, but I like my spreadsheet. Everything is in there, I don’t have to worry about an app being discontinued, it’s easy to search for any words or phrases I want, and I can use my laptop’s keyboard to type everything out (that’s much easier for me than tapping on a phone.) When I have random thoughts about things I want to add to the spreadsheet, I record them in the to-do list app on my phone, then later put them in the spreadsheet. Every morning I check my email and look at Facebook. While I’m at my computer, I update the spreadsheet. Easy. Occasionally I’ll pop in some information later in the day, too.

I started with a lot of categories which, to be honest, I never consistently used. There are some blank days, too. Interestingly, as of now (December 2020) there hasn’t been a blank day since March 2019. During the pandemic it’s easier to stay on top of this, but clearly my tracking improved long before that. Still, while blank days are less helpful, I try to remember that making notes sometimes is much better than making notes never.

So what do I record? As much as I can, here’s what I like to track:

• The length of time I use my ASV machine each night. (An ASV is a form of CPAP machine, used to treat my sleep apnea.) Every morning when I wake up, the machine tells me how long it’s been on. This is also a fairly accurate record of how long I slept.
• Any delays to taking my medication on a given day. Maybe I forgot. Maybe I ate a meal late and so I had to alter when I took a medication. This doesn’t usually matter, but sometimes I feel off and it helps to be able to look back and see if this was the reason. I’ll also note if I took it early for any reason, but this is rare.
• My period, and how heavy it is that day. (I also note this in my calendar, for easy access during medical appointments.)
• Any changes to medications or supplements. I note names of medications and supplements, doses, and times of day that I take them.
• Any unusual symptoms, or changes in the degree of my symptoms. I’ll note if my right knee hurts one day, and what makes it worse. I’ll note if my fatigue suddenly hits me hard. I always note gastrointestinal symptoms.
• Any other changes that I want to track. For example, I use a blue light every morning. These are commonly used to treat seasonal affective disorder (and it’s definitely helped mine!) but I use it primarily to adjust my sleep cycle. At my last appointment with my sleep specialist, I mentioned my recent difficulty going to bed at a reasonable hour each night. He suggested that I adjust when I use my blue light in the mornings, moving it earlier by a few minutes each day until I reach the target time. This is a huge struggle for me, as it means I need to get out of bed earlier. That’s not something I’m good at. So now I am writing down what time I use the blue each morning to be sure that I’m more or less on track. It’s taking me ages to move the light, but I look at my notes each morning to get encouragement that I’m moving in the right direction. I can also use it to see if the change in time (and hence a change in my sleep schedule) is impacting how I feel in other ways. Once I reach my goal, I will stop tracking this, but those notes will remain in the spreadsheet for those days. There are many things I track temporarily like this.
• Unusual activities and overall symptoms levels. I’ll note if today felt like an especially productive day, if I was out at friend’s house all day without getting tired (pre-pandemic, of course), if I took an unusually long walk and how it made me feel, if a short walk made me tired or caused pain, if I stayed up too late the night before and how I feel as a result. I will also note outside factors, like if it’s a dark and dreary day, I will note that because it impacts my energy levels (remember the seasonal affective disorder I mentioned before? Yeah, weather is a big one) or if it’s hot out and I had to spend time outdoors then I’ll note it because that increases my inflammation levels.

As you can see, there are certain things that I track regularly, and others that I track temporarily. Some things are obvious (a change in medication) and some less so (the weather.) The key is, over time I have been figuring out what tends to impact my health and those are the things I note. This has been incredibly helpful.

Recently I was fatigued. It hit me suddenly, which was odd, but I figured maybe I’d been doing too much. I blamed my adrenal insufficiency, which was a reasonable assumption. After a few days I knew that wasn’t the issue, but didn’t know what was happening. Eventually I realized I’d been glutened. My symptom tracking showed me that the gluten explained my previously unexplainable knee swelling and the intense brain fog.

And then there was the time that I suddenly realized that I was having less brain fog. My thinking had been clearer for several days than it had been in a long time. I looked at my symptom tracking and noticed that, based on the timing, this was probably due to stopping some supplements. I had stopped taking those vitamins because they contained corn derivatives in the fillers, and I had recently decided to get more aggressive about cutting corn out of my diet, since I knew I reacted badly to it in larger quantities. It had been immediately obvious that cutting out those smaller bits of corn was helping my digestive issues, but it was only thanks to my tracking that I realized its impact on my cognition.

I could give you dozens of examples of my symptom tracking spreadsheet helping me over the years. It’s not perfect, but for me it works. Ideally I would like to track a lot more information, but I have found that when I try to do more, I get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing at all. Something is better than nothing, so for now, I will continue to do this.

This works well for me, but I know it’s not the right approach for everyone. Please share what works for you, too, because it may give others some useful ideas. Do you track your symptoms? If so, what do you track and what program do you use? What would you recommend to others? I hope that everyone who wants to track their symptoms can find an approach that works well for them.