Dear Mary:
You asked for comments on the following "experiment " that you have been
trying on and off.
"The "experiment" was to report into a micro-cassette recorder every hour on
the hour, answering very briefly how I'm feeling, what movements are not
"normal" at that moment, whether or not there's any pain, and what my mood
is: "9am, stiff right neck and shoulder, twisting right leg, pain in
cramping right foot, feeling blue." I kept records of all the
embarrassing stuff too: bowels, periods, weight, blood pressure, sweat
and tears".
My answer is:
This was certainly a step in the right direction, but my experience
with recording
in this manner is that when you are finished it is hard to stand back and
get the big
picture.
I would suggest that you try setting up a sheet of paper for each day,
with time down the
left side and a column for each of the things that you are looking at. Work
out ratings on a 1 to
10 basis for each of the column items . (Sometimes all you need is YES or
NO). As time goes on you will find that only some are important and you
can drop the rest.
( I make out blank forms on my computer using Excel 5, a spreadsheet
program.)
Keep at it every day and in time you should be able to stand back and
see what is happening..
Of course if you really want to get hi-tech you can put the results in your
computer and let a good
statistical program like CSS Statistica analyze the results for you.
from Robert Naylor ([log in to unmask])
