The percentage index is useful in giving one a general idea of how well the patient is doing on the treatment protocol. Patients usually determine their complaints to be symptoms of some problem when they consider them to be inappropriate given the circumstances. To get a feel for how abnormal a patient judges his or her collection of symptoms to be, I will frequently ask him/her, “Compared to a normal person, all things taken together, would you say you feel 20, 40, 60, or 80 percent normal?” Or, “Compared to the way you felt before developing all these symptoms, all things taken together would you say you feel 20 percent normal, 40 percent, 60 percent, or 80 percent?” It is often helpful to get this overall subjective assessment of a patient’s clinical status initially and at each office visit. The symptoms often worsen and improve together in a group and this assessment helps give one an idea of a trend.