Robert Whitfield MD shares how a patient's partner noticed dramatic changes after explant: getting out of bed for four hours daily instead of staying in bed, doing laundry, and mentioning pain only twice a day instead of roughly 100 times. He argues that someone close to you is the best way to measure real improvement.
And then I got her wife on the call with me, and her wife was telling me then that actually, she's nicer to me. She's doing the laundry. She's getting out of bed for four hours a day when before she wasn't getting out of bed at all. She's actually complaining about only mentioning her pain twice a day instead of about 100 times. Because the brain, you know, so orient to what is wrong. Right? That's our survival tool. And so I do find in this population, having a partner, a spouse, a friend, anybody that can be that other sounding board to say, what else? What are you noticing? Because it really is good data to say, oh, yeah, this is working. We're on the right track. Things are changing.
