I put out a poll several years ago now: POLL: Are you getting better?
For those who’ve had MAV for 12 months or more, the vast majority of people responded by saying they are better than they were a year before.
If we ignore the “not had for 12 months” people (reasonable for this angle), then roughly:
- 72% feel improvement in 1 year
- 16% are about the same
- 12% feel worse
So, whilst we need to be aware of the more difficult cases, most people improve, by a large margin. Feeling worse is the least likely case, but sadly occurs for roughly 1 in every 8.5 cases.
Bear in mind these numbers will include people who’ve had MAV for 3 years as well as people who’ve had it for 1.5 years.
One anecdotal piece of evidence to back this up are the significant numbers of people who used to post a lot here, who rarely do now, suggesting they’ve got things under control and they’ve moved on.
A year time frame was chosen because, as we all know, there are lots of ups-and-downs in MAV and symptoms will rise and fall, so it’s important to look at things from a long enough perspective to notice real base-line improvement.
So in any case, for most of our users, especially those with MAV for just a year or two, improvement over the next 12 months is very likely !!