The Sick Kit

Ugh...I was down with a cough and cold for most of last week and once I started recovering, it was my husband's turn as he had caught whatever I had, plus a fever!

Being sick is no fun but over the years, I've learned that in order to make the healing process easier and especially when caring for a sick person, it helps to have a "Sick Kit" ready.

Source

My definition of a Sick Kit is a collection of items that are useful for helping a sick person to get better. (In case you're wondering, this is different from a First Aid kit because it contains items that are more specific to a particular illness.)

The items to include will depend on whatever the illness is, but the whole point is to keep everything easily accessible so that the sick person (and the caregiver for that matter!) don't have to move around too much.

In our case, we included the following:

• Thermometer
• Throat lozenges
• Paracetamol
• Saline nose spray
• Box of Tissues
• Water
• Trash can for throwing used tissues 
• Notes on my phone for tracking fever temperatures

Everything (except the trash can) was put on a small, portable table and positioned right next to the bed. Easy! :)

So while my husband and I aren't 100% recovered yet, I can safely say that a little bit of organizing (and tons of tissues) did help us to feel a lot better!

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Organizing Your Health and Medical Information

Having gone through a few health issues over the last few years, I can't stress enough, the importance of keeping good health and medical records for you and your family. The benefits of doing this include being able to keep track of any major illnesses and vaccinations, making it easier to provide pertinent medical information to your healthcare providers, and knowing when your last medical tests were, so you can be sure to take them again when necessary.

To organize our health and medical records, I made some printables and created a Medical Binder to keep the following information in one easy-to-access-and-update location:

• Medical Contacts
• Medical History
• Family Health History
• Doctor Visits
• Lab Tests & Results
• Prescription Tracker
• Symptoms Tracker
• Dental Records

I divided the binder into two sections -- one for me and one for my husband. Then I printed two sets of the sheets above, and put them in plastic page protectors.  I also added a bunch of empty page protectors to each section of the binder. 

How it works is that whenever we visit the doctor or have any medical tests done, we note down the information on the appropriate sheets, and then we take all the paperwork like prescriptions, receipts, and test results, and slip them into empty page protectors.

Our medical binder also has one page protector for each section, where important test results from the previous year are kept. This is in case we need to compare results for new tests. For example, my husband and I did an annual physical last year, so we kept those results in the binder to compare them to the physical we plan to do in 2013.

This method of organization has been working really well for us so far, but of course there are many other ways to keep track of your medical records. You can use a folder and a file cabinet or you can keep a notebook where you jot everything down. Whatever way you decide to use, the important thing is to get started! :)

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