Some five or six years ago, I was at the local hospital, seated in a small, crowded waiting room. I had an appointment to see a member of the Surgical team, and had been given a lengthy form to fill in while I waited. Among the details it demanded was a list of my medications (as if I could remember them all or pronounce them let alone know how to spell them) and a list of surgeries (like I’m going to remember when, what, where and who performed the procedure — not a hope!).
I let out a theatrical sigh whereupon the lovely woman sitting next to me patted me on the arm and said, “They’re horrid forms, aren’t they dear.” Yes they certainly are and, I told myself with grumpy irrationality, apparently devised by some miserable pillock in Admin to increase the anxiety I’m already feeling when I arrived half an hour early for the appointment.
Then this dear lady pulled from a capacious bag two closely-typed pages which she called her husband’s MediSheet. He’d had a great many surgeries, procedures, tests and treatments over the years, she explained, and she couldn’t possibly remember them all so she’d taken to writing them down and bringing her lists with them to appointments.
But now they have the computer (a quick digression followed about her son in IT), she has it all neatly typed up and saved in a Word file which is so much easier to update and print off when needed.
What a genius idea! Simple, sensible and so useful! I decided there and then that I would type up my own MediSheet that evening.
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