Here’s my symptom chart for January. You can download a PDF of it here.
About These Charts:
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a Graphic Designer. I’m also a data geek. I love facts, figures and statistics. Even more, what I love, is to merge the two together. The perspective that visualized data provides is so cool. So, after reading somewhere that it was a good idea to keep track of your symptoms over time I devised this chart to do just that.
The charts are really just for me. I showed it to my PCP and could have cared less. I went to see an Allergist and he told me that I should "spend more time getting well and less time charting my symptoms." Lucky for him he’s also a friend of mine. Truth is, after making the template, it only takes me about 3 minutes every couple of days to update the chart. It’s all automated. I like doing them and don’t care what the doctors think. However, I do hope someone else out there is intrigued.
The horizontal access contains every day of the month. The 0-10 values on the vertical access are pretty arbitrary — 0 = No symptoms, 10 = Symptoms extreme enough to keep me home from work or in bed. Across this access there are seven different symptom categories. These are my main symptoms, though I have others. I may swap things out
in the future, but for now these are the things that I monitor daily:
- Fatigue (red)
- Brain Fog (orange)
- Weakness (yellow)
- Sore Throat (green)
- Headaches (blue)
- Muscle Pain (brown)
- Tingling (pink)
In addition to keeping track of the symptoms, I also try to keep track of things that might change or affect them. Across the bottom are indicators for when I do stretches, biking, running, swimming or visit a doctor.
