The Longer You've Been Ill, the Less You Notice Getting Better
The short answer
Why can treatment feel unchanged from last month? Bad days stand out while gradual changes are easy to miss, so track practical shifts such as nights woken by pain and the number of better days.
Contents
The Longer You've Been Ill, the Less You Notice Getting Better
"How has it been compared with last month?"
Most people answer "the same." Then you listen a bit longer and they are doing this month what they couldn't do last month. Only they don't know it.
This is common. And there is a reason.
Bad days leave a bigger mark
Memory doesn't file good days and bad days evenly.
The day it hurt stays sharp; the day it was fine just goes by. On a fine day you live without thinking about your body — that is what fine means, and so nothing is left behind.
Look back over a month and only the bad days get counted. Twenty days fine and ten days bad, and what comes to mind is the ten. And it feels "the same."
That isn't weak-mindedness. Memory is simply built that way.
And the baseline climbs with you
There is one more thing.
Pain at 8 drops to 5 and at first it feels like living again. Then a few weeks on, 5 is the new baseline. And 5 becomes the hard state. The 8 has been forgotten.
The body adapted. That is a good thing, and it hides the improvement.
The better it gets, the less you can tell it got better — an awkward piece of engineering.
So we write it down
That is why we go over what has improved at each visit. Not to console you — to do the job memory can't.
Nothing elaborate. Last time you said "I wake twice in the night" and today you say "once," so I point at it. You can't feel the change in between. What shifts a little each day is never felt.
And I ask you to count the fine days too, not only the bad ones. How many in a month. If that number is growing, you are going. (When it keeps going better then worse)
Getting tired is only fair
Be ill long enough and you tire. And that isn't a matter of will — walking on with no visible progress is something people simply can't do. We walk when we can see a direction.
So rather than telling you not to tire, making it visible is my job.
Don't hold out alone. What has improved, we can count together.
It may be changing even when you can't feel it. I'll be watching from beside you.
Written by Dr. Heo Ji-young (PhD in Korean Medicine Pathology, Kyung Hee University · former Research Professor of Herbology, Kyung Hee University)
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