Pain Log and the Power of Blogging

I didn’t stay quiet for long, did I?

I’ve admitted this blog is mainly for me to work through my weight and health challenges. So don’t be surprised when I change my mind. Sometimes writing it out helps me work things out. I realized I haven’t necessarily been very consistent with my efforts. Aside from the almost 6 week mandatory post surgery rest, I’ve probably been all over the place. Feel better? - Do more! Ouch, it hurts? – Why would that be? Kidding. But still. I decided I need to get with it and keep an actual pain log and do something consistently for at least a week and track and see what happens. I tried to figure out a pain log before, but I kept changing my mind on the format. There wasn’t enough room in my existing health-tracking calendar. What to develop instead? Or overhaul my existing tracking instead? Excel can create graphs (not that I have made recent graphs, still there’s potential). Word has more space. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble I had finding amiable free online calendar templates. Should I color-code things? How many days do I want to be able to see at a time? In short, I got bogged down and didn’t track my aches and pains anyway. I believe I have a calendar format to my liking now, so let’s do this.

Here is my resolve for the week.

• Keep a log of my aches and pains, when or what seems to make them worse, and use the 1-10 scale.
• Move my ____ shoulder slowly and gradually at the beginning of the day to loosen up.
• Keep moving my blasted shoulder throughout the day and keep moving as long as it’s not significant pain. Power through the vague achiness and only modify things if it’s the ouch – something is really wrong pain.
• Take ginger and turmeric supplements at least twice a day. Was going to try this anyway. They’re supposed to be good to reduce inflammation.

Could do more, but don’t want to make it so complex that it’s harder to keep up with everything. There’s proof for the power of blogging. I might not have remembered how sore I was last year merely trying new exercises in the first place. I thought after surgery I wouldn’t be starting over square one, but maybe I am. Thus the idea to power through mild discomfort and keep going. Besides, what is the exact difference between soreness versus pain? I mean, soreness does sometimes seem like a general mild pain. We’ll leave that debate for another day.