Why you should track your symptoms

Monitoring Symptoms Following a Concussion

A symptom tracker is an invaluable tool for managing brain injury recovery. Here are three key advantages:

1. Identifying Triggers: Tracking symptoms helps pinpoint factors that may trigger or exacerbate symptoms, enabling you to better manage and anticipate them.

2. Enhancing Communication: With a symptom tracker, you can provide clear, detailed updates to doctors, therapists, and legal professionals, eliminating the need to rely on a foggy memory for questions like, “How have you been feeling over the past week?”

3. Measuring Progress: By recording your symptoms, you can assess how different treatments and therapies are affecting your recovery. While you may experience fluctuations in your condition, tracking can help reveal overall trends and progress.

What to Track

To effectively monitor your symptoms, record sufficient details to understand how your condition varies from day to day and what influences these changes. Consider tracking the following:

- Date

- Weather

- Sleep Patterns: Quantity and quality

- Diet and Hydration: What you eat and drink

- Mood

- Daily Activities: Locations, intensity, and duration

- Symptoms:

- Physical: Headaches, neck pain, etc.

- Vision: Double vision, eye strain, etc.

- Cognitive: Attention issues, brain fog, etc.

- Emotional: Depression, anxiety, etc.

You may not need to track all these factors. For instance, if you don’t experience vision changes, omit those symptoms from your log.

If this seems overwhelming, start with tracking your daily activities and physical symptoms.

Tools for Tracking Symptoms

Maintaining a symptom log can be challenging due to memory, motivation, and organization issues, which may be affected by a brain injury. Here are some tools to simplify the process:

- Planner or Calendar: Record your symptoms alongside your daily activities in a planner or calendar.

- Journal:

- Flaredown: Allows tracking of symptoms, treatments, and triggers, with reminder notifications.

- Symple Symptom Tracker: Tracks up to five symptoms and five influencing factors for free.

- Migraine Buddy: Focuses on tracking headaches and their triggers.

- Create a custom chart to track only the items relevant to you, or use pre-made templates available online. For instance, Migraine Diaries provides a printable headache-tracking template.

To get started, subscribe below for a pre-made template from Rethink Speech Therapy.

Next Steps

1. Choose between a digital or paper method for tracking your symptoms.

2. Try one of the recommended tools and record your symptoms daily for at least four weeks.

3. Use your insights to anticipate and manage challenging activities and situations.

4. Make necessary adjustments to your environment, activity duration, or strategies to minimize symptom escalation.

For additional information on managing symptoms like sensory overload post-concussion, explore further resources.