Keeping a pain management diary
Writing down your experience with pain in a diary may be useful for your discussions with your doctor. You are the only one who knows how much pain you are feeling and when your doctor asks you about your pain you may not remember how bad the pain was. Keeping a pain diary will help you describe what you have been feeling. It will be very helpful for your doctor to know when the pain was bad, what made you feel better, and what did not make you feel better.
Write the words that describe how you are feeling. The following questions may help:
- Where does it hurt? List every place that it hurts. Does the pain feel different in different places?
- How does the pain feel? The following words might be helpful: burning, stabbing, sharp, aching, throbbing, tingling, dull, pounding, pressing.
- Did you have pain when you woke up or did it start later?
- Does the pain change during the day?
- What, if anything, makes the pain better or worse?
- What medicines are you taking? Do they help � never, sometimes, always? List all of the medicines your doctor/s gave you and all of the medicines you bought for yourself.
- Have you stopped taking any medicines because they made you constipated, sleepy or sick, or for other reasons?
- Do you do anything to help make the pain go away other than medicine � i.e. getting a massage, meditating etc?
- Do you have trouble sleeping because of pain?
- Does the pain keep you from spending time with your family and friends?
- Do you skip meals because of pain?
- How has the pain changed your life?
Reproduced by permission: American Pain Foundation, Baltimore, Maryland; www.painfoundation.org.
