A Little Homework Project

I never thought I would be using my blog for a homework assignment.

Never say never.

Sorry to drag you along with me, but my original plan didn't work out so well.

I'm in a great class right now called Inquiry and Research.  We were assigned to do an Action Research Project on anything our little hearts desired.  Since we are a group of Education-junkies, one would think that we each would have chosen to do our projects in our schools on something education related.

One would be wrong.

We have been immersed in grad school for so long, that when presented with the opportunity to do a little Action Research on our personal lives, many of us jumped at the chance.

Here is our assignment in a nutshell:

• Pick a problem.
• Determine who will be a part of the action research.
• Devise a strategy to implement.
• Determine two things the strategy will effect.
• Collect data.
• Analyze data.
• Determine action based on the data.

That is the short version.  The long version includes an abstract, researching several sources, a detailed rubric, and a 10-15 page paper on the project.  But I won't bore you with those details.

Back to my little project.

Part of the data collection piece includes qualitative data and quantitative data.  Quantitative data is right up my alley.  Numbers, statistics, right and wrong, black and white.  That part will be easy.

Qualitative data, on the other hand, is descriptive in nature, with no happy little numbers to define the results.  Qualitative data can be acquired in a variety of ways....including surveys, journals, interviews, blogs.....

Aha....a blog.

There was one I knew I could do. 

I had this goal of setting up my own little project blog to track the data of my action research strategy.  A week or so into the project, I got a little overwhelmed with setting up an entire blog just for that.

So, here I am, prepared to make you follow my study.

Here is a short history on what I am doing:

Back in 2009 I was diagnosed with Polycystic Liver Disease.  It sounds terrible, but the vast majority of people live normal, fairly non-symptomatic lives even though they have a liver covered with cysts.  They are watching me for Polycystic Kidney Disease as well, which is much worse, but so far things are holding steady. 

As cysts grow and change, the most common symptom is pain/discomfort.  The cysts can also cause a person to feel full faster (some days I almost wish for this one...), have low energy level, and just overall not feel great because the organs are working harder to flush out all the junk we put in our bodies.

Anywhooo...I have been feeling a little less than stellar lately and have been experiencing some pain.  Short of doing another CT scan, I don't actually know that the pain is coming from PLD.  The symptoms match and the location of the discomfort matches, but beyond that, who knows.

While researching PLD I came across diet suggestions to help with these symptoms.  The "research" varies on the exact things to eat, but the overall idea is the same.

Whole foods.

No shocker there.

Stay away from anything processed and packed with preservatives.  No refined sugars, etc., etc. 

This makes sense.  My liver and kidneys already have to work a bit harder due to the cysts, and adding all of the chemical junk cannot be good for those organs.

So here we go.

Quantitatively, my pain/discomfort is off and on, but reaches around a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10.  I will be rating this each week.

Qualitatively, my energy level is relatively low.  I have to push myself to get motivated to be active.   I am sure there are a plethora of potential factors, but I am going to try not to alter much in my world except for the diet.  The goal is to see if my energy level will increase over the next few weeks.  I will be posting weekly to track my progress.

It will not be thrilling or exciting, but homework is homework, and you, my friend, get to embrace it with me!

The research begins now.