Closed September 2017

Clutter Video Tip: Organizing During Medical Challenges

Having injuries and medical problems can be a bitter pill to swallow. So, you want to make sure you are doing everything you can to get back to your clean bill of health. Watch this video to see me share a dose of my own medicine. That’s just what the doctor ordered!

(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/tcdhealth.)

Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today we’re going to talk about organizing in the face of medical challenges. Why am I bringing this up? Because I am wearing currently this lovely piece of fashion footwear on my foot. I have a running injury; I kind of overdid it. So I’m grateful for the boot because it’s helping me get better, it’s helping keep me out of pain, but it definitely has caused me to rethink a lot of my routines and plan a little bit more. So let’s talk about some of the changes that you have to make during a medical challenge.

So first, you have to do a lot more planning. So in my case, for example, everything takes longer, and I need more help than I usually do. So, if we’re going through the grocery store, I’ve really got to think about the way I’m walking through so I don’t have to back-track and, you know, double around and do more steps than I’m supposed to. I also need to allow more time when I’m getting ready in the morning. And I need to just ask people to go pick up things for me, and I need to not be walking around quite so much. So, you do have to think ahead when you have medical challenges. You have more doctor’s appointments to plan, you need to sit and do your weekly planning for sure. We have a video all about that.

The other thing that comes up is that you may have little projects that need to happen to organize, let’s say, medications and supplements for example. So we have a whole video about that too. But you might want to use a sorter like this once a week and sit down and deal out all the medications so that that’s already figured out and done and you can actually see what’s been given and hasn’t been given. Also, you might want to have a system for logging some of the information involved in a health challenge.

So for medication dosing, you can do a couple of different things. If it’s very simple, you might just use a wipe-off board and say, “The next dose is due at this time” and just wipe it off and write the next one on as soon as you give it. You might have batteries to change in medical equipment, or you might have ice to change every few hours. The wipe-off board is a great way to do that if things, again, are very simple. If you’re sharing care-giving responsibilities, it’s probably better to do it as a log, so that there’s a history written down, not just something wiped off every few hours on a board. So, you might want to create some kind of a log print-out. I have this in our Member Area. It’s a family medication dosing chart. So, if you have two children that have strep throat, you can log all their antibiotic doses and make sure they’ve all been given. You can use this however you like, but – and you can create your own – but the point is that you may need to have a history of things.

Obviously, you might need alarms, and everybody’s got a smart phone, or at least a phone that will do alarms, you know, when you put them in the calendar somewhere in your apps that you have. You can use this wisely for medication dosing and all kinds of things. Changing ice, whatever you need to do.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that you may have a lot of information to gather as far as medical tests are concerned. And you may have various doctors that need to share that information. Certainly, they have their own systems for doing that. But I have found it very valuable to use Evernote for my medical records for my own reasons. So I like having that to reference. And I’m able to share that with other people very easily. So MRI reports, X-rays, different things like that, you can actually capture in Evernote if you have the hard copy or the digital copy. It’s very easy to do. And then you can send people a link to that if they want to look at it. So much easier than having to wait for a doctor’s office to do the sending for you.

If you want to get a copy of that family medication dosing chart, you can see that in our Member Area and find out how to be a member for free for two weeks with our Quick Start Program. So you can find out more about that at clutterdiet.com/learnmore.

See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

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