Why Finding your Current Baseline Matters
Today, I will have my final medical appointment in a long stretch of medical appointments starting at the end of November. As I mentioned previously, that was when I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Since then, we’ve been working through several procedures and tests to create what we all refer to as my current baseline.
In oversimplified terms, my care team and I have been creating a model that is what my body looks like as I begin treating my diabetes. This baseline becomes a starting point as we move forward a few months and years. As my eye doctor said to me yesterday, we have all the images and charts so that at my next eye exam, we can measure exactly what kind of impact, if any, the condition is having on my eyes.
The same is true of my blood work, cancer screenings, etc. I have details and photos of part of me I never wanted pictures of, but it’s an essential part of the process so that we can see if the disease is under control or is wreaking havoc that I can’t see.
In a couple of months, I’ll return, and we will examine my A1C and glucose. We’ll compare them to where they were when we started and know precisely how things are going. Then, we’ll compare the numbers with those from where we started, which should look better. (FYI—I check my blood sugar twice daily, so I see a running tally of how things are going on the glucose front, which is also essential.)
I’m sure not many of you care about the intimate details of my medical condition, but I share that with you so that I can share this.
Many people give up on healing because they can’t see how far they’ve come. They can only see how far away their ideal self is from where they are now. Sadly, this ideal is often unrealistic. We are also blind to our progress because we didn’t set the baseline. We look at our status today and can only compare it to what we think we should be instead of looking back and seeing how much improvement there was.
This breaks my heart because we should celebrate the improvements. We should use the small wins to encourage us to move on and continue the work. My blood sugar today is lower and more stable than in November, and I weigh slightly less than in November. Am I at my ideal level of health? Of course not; we’ve only been at this for over a month.
But there have been wins, and I am grateful to see and be proud of them.
You have had wins, too. If we could spend less time examining our ideals and more time discussing how far we’ve come, we might see them. Too often, trauma survivors are afraid to look back and get lost, looking for that finish line of “healed!” I would love it if we could change that measurement standard to answer the simple question instead: “Am I better than I was?”
If you can look back at your starting baseline and see any improvement, that is a reason to celebrate. I’m proud of you for improving. That means you can make improvements and take small steps in your healing. We know that those small steps add up and become significant milestones.
If we don’t know our starting point, comparing the images side by side and measuring the impacts will be more challenging.
The beginning of a new year is a good time to define your current baseline. Where are you today? What are you headed toward? Then, in a month or next year, how far did you get? Where did you have wins? Those are fantastic. Where did you not have as many wins? How can we move that forward more next month or next year?
Healing and treating a chronic condition are a lot alike in that regard. It’s all about making small changes and progress. Until one day, significant changes help get it under control. Not gone, but controllable.
