Health journal prompts
A health journal is most useful when it is boring and exact: what happened, when, how bad, what you had done differently that day. Precision is what makes a record worth bringing to an appointment.
How to use these
Write the facts first with times and numbers. Then, when you want to, answer one of the questions about how it is to live with.
Today, exactly
Times and numbers, written the same day. A month of these is the thing that turns a hunch into a pattern somebody else can read.
- How was your body today, in plain terms?
- What changed today, and when exactly?
- What helped, and how quickly?
- What did you do differently today that might be relevant?
- How did you sleep, and what was different about the evening before?
- What did you eat and drink today, and when?
- What did you take today, at what dose and what time?
- How much did you move today, and how did it feel afterwards?
For the appointment
Written for the version of you who is sitting in the chair with eleven minutes and a blank mind.
- What would you want a doctor to know about this week?
- What question do you want to ask at the next appointment before you forget it?
- What has the pattern been over the last month?
- What happened at the last appointment, in your own words, once you were out of the room?
- What have you been told that you did not understand, and by whom?
- What has been tried already, for how long, and what happened?
- What would you want written down if you could only bring one page?
- What has changed since the referral was written?
Living with it
The half that does not go in a chart. It is also the half you will be gladdest to have when this is behind you.
- What has this stopped you doing, and does that matter to you?
- What are you worried about, and is it the symptom or the not knowing?
- What has been good this week, apart from all this?
- What would a manageable version of this look like?
- What do you wish people understood without you having to explain it?
- What did you say yes to this week that you paid for afterwards?
- Who has been steady through this, and what have they done?
- What have you adapted well that nobody ever gives you credit for?
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