On numbers

My psychiatrist and psychologist conferred last week and, among other things, recommend that I use the Beck Depression Inventory to assess my symptoms. For the past year, and recording the numbers since April, we've used a 1-7 scale to assess my mood, energy, and cognitive abilities. The scale is based on a similar scale used to assess pain - 1 is great; 7 is incapacitated.

It's a puzzle that they haven't recommended the BDI before. They've probably used it as part of interviews; I suspect that the hospital and Social Security folks used BDI or something similar in their evaluations. Nevertheless, I've been carefully recording and reporting our numbers for all this time and it seems strange that they're only now introducing the BDI as a tool for regular use.

I had an appointment with my psychologist yesterday and will see my psychiatrist on Thursday. The major issue of late, as I've mentioned before, has been my bad sleep and the toll that it takes on my resilience.

In spite of the tiredness and the nearby troubles, I've been able to get stuff done on a daily basis, something that wouldn't have happened even two or three months ago. Some of the tasks are as simple as being able to throw something away. Others involve more analysis and skill, such as setting up a home network for our two computers. I've been using Remember The Milk as a way to plan and track completion of tasks. There's a Firefox extension that integrates RTM with GMail, making it handy to look at the day's business in a single page. It's just nerdly enough to be fun.