Five months of logs, every day, 0-10, twice a day. Brought printed pages to my appointment in April thinking it’d finally show the pattern. He skimmed maybe ten seconds and asked, so mostly a 5? That was it.
All that data and it collapsed into one number in his head. What changed things wasn’t more logging, it was different logging. My June appointment I brought one page instead of sixty, just the days I couldn’t finish my shift, with the score that morning and what I’d done two days before. Six flare days circled, everything else left off.
He actually read that one. Asked about the Sunday to Wednesday gap I’d flagged. I don’t think doctors want the full spreadsheet, I think they want the exceptions. Which feels backwards after months of being told to track everything, but the daily 5s and 6s apparently read as noise to him even though they’re my actual baseline.
Anyone else find the doctor only engages with the outlier days, not the average? Did cutting your log down actually change what got discussed at the appointment?