Journaling in hospital: keeping track when the days lose their edges

Hospital does two things to you at once. It removes every marker that normally separates one day from another, and it delivers important information in thirty second bursts by people who are already leaving the room.

A notebook or a phone handles both problems, and it is one of the few things you can actually control from a bed.

Write down what you are told, immediately

Who said it, when, and what it actually meant. Ward rounds are fast, you are often on medication, and the person explaining assumes you will remember.

You will not. Nobody does. Written notes let you ask a coherent follow up the next morning instead of half remembering a word, and they let you notice when two people have told you different things, which happens more than anyone likes to admit.

Keep your own symptom record

Pain, sleep, what time the nausea started, what helped. You are the only person present for all of it, and the observations that get charted are the ones that happen when someone is in the room.

A written record is also what you take to the follow up appointment weeks later, when you are asked how it went and can only remember that it was bad.

Write your questions before the round

The consultant arrives, asks if you have any questions, and every question you had for two days evaporates.

A list on your phone fixes this completely. Three written questions get answered. Three remembered ones do not, and you spend the rest of the day annoyed at yourself.

Write the part that is not medical

Boredom, indignity, the fear at four in the morning, gratitude to a particular nurse, homesickness for very ordinary things. This is most of the experience and none of it is recorded anywhere.

It also helps to have somewhere to put fear that is not a visitor. Visitors come to be reassured, and most people perform being fine for them, which is exhausting on top of being ill.

Start your own private journal tonight.

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Free to start. Your stories stay encrypted on your device.

Prompts for a stay

• What was I told today, and by whom?
• What do I want to ask tomorrow?
• How was the pain, the sleep, the food?
• What am I afraid of that I did not say to anyone?
• What was the best five minutes of today?

If you are the one visiting

The same applies to a relative sitting beside the bed. You will be told things the patient does not hear or does not retain, you will be making decisions on very little sleep, and you will want the record afterwards. Write it in the corridor, not from memory that evening.

Why this belongs to you

This is your own health information, your honest opinion of your care, and fear you did not show anyone who visited. It should not be on a shared tablet or in a note anyone can pick up from the bedside table.

Innera keeps every story encrypted on your device, so the record of a hospital stay stays with the person who lived it.