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Exercise: Know Your Pain

One of the most helpful tools you can use to understand your pain and to help your caregivers understand is to create your own pain profile. This can seem like a lot of work, but once you are practiced at it, it will become second nature and allow you to objectively understand what you are feeling and what, if anything, you need to do about it.

Start by keeping a simple pain diary. Every day, record the following for each individual pain you can identify:

•Location of pain

•Duration of pain

•Intensity of pain

•Description of pain

•Activity immediately before pain

•Medications or action taken for pain and their effect

You can use the list of descriptive words shown earlier to narrow down the feeling of the pain you are experiencing. It is vital that you are able to perceive how your pain manifests and its effect on your day and your world.

Performing this exercise while in pain can be tough, but do the best you can. It may be easier for you to wait until the end of the day, and record every instance you can remember at once—this also helps you to separate and categorize different types of pain you have felt through the day.