Stats & MyQOL…

Hi! Hope everyone is well, enjoying this rather cooler Sunday… Enjoying the Ashes cricket!

So people may have noticed to the footer of my posts I have been including a little ‘stats’, just as an on-going measure of how I may be progressing. This has been helped by a brilliant little Monitoring App and on-line tool, I’ll share more about this with you shortly…

So to explain exactly what these ‘stats’ are…

MyQOL: (I’ll come back to this below, it’s from the previously mentioned app/on-line tool).

Last Weigh-In: As you may know, weight loss is one of the symptoms or side effects of IBD, Ulcerative Colitis and/or Crohn’s Disease… I think it is important to track my weight loss to find if I can control it, stem it when needed and even help to increase my body mass in the healthiest way possible… More importantly, make sure I’m not wasting away!! I’ll not get into the age old discussion about the out-dated Victorian system of BMI (Body Mass Index), it can surely only work for Mr & Mrs Average?!?!

Last CRP Check: A CRP check is done using a blood test to identify the level of C-Reactive Protein in someone’s system. Higher amounts of C-Reactive Protein can indicate high levels of inflammation within the body, generally speaking an average healthy person should be below 5… I peaked at 133 when hospitalized!

Let’s Get ‘Appy’! 🙂

GI Monitor

I have adopted the use ofthis brilliant App/on-line tool thats available:

On the internet: GI Monitor – WellApps

On Apple iOS: GI Monitor – Medivo Inc.

On Android: GI Monitor – Medivo

To quote the developers site “GI Monitor is a symptom logging application for patients with IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease), Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis. The app allows patients to easily and accurately log symptoms and provide this data to their doctors for optimal treatment. In addition, patients can see correlations between symptoms, meals and medications.”

I have found this App to be very useful, updating using my iPhone and it syncing directly with the App on my Android based Asus/Google Nexus 7 means I never miss to log any meal or symptoms and can have a measure on how I am doing given the recorded symptoms or side effects I may be experiencing. Over half of the people who have reviewed this app/tool have given 5/5 and best of all it’s free!

MyQOL

Finally MyQOL, to quote the developers “MyQOL is GI Monitor’s custom Quality of Life index. Based on a simple scale of 1-10, GI Monitor uses a weighted algorithm that considers symptoms like BM frequency, BM urgency, BM blood and pain to calculate a score. The MyQOL score is intended to be a relative measure of progression or regression in patient Quality of Life.” I really have found this so very helpful since my first flare and intend to use it indefinitely…

If anyone has found any other Apps/Tools or any other technology that helps with the day to day of living with IBD, Ulcerative Colitis or Proctitis I would be very interested to hear about them please get in touch.

I hope you enjoy this post and will ‘in-tract’ should you have any comments, anything to add or even want to chat?! Keep well.. Dan

MyQOL: 9.5/10 21/07/13 (Getting better!)
Last Weigh-In: 13st 2lbs 21/07/13 (Weight loss slowing, aiming to not go below 13st)
Last CRP Check: 52 08/07/13