In this day of electronic records, it is still a good idea to track what medicines you take currently, and have taken in the past as part of your medical estate planning.

It is actually a simple task to create a spreadsheet in Google or Excel to track your medicines, how much, when, and who prescribed it.

Here is a sample of my tracking spreadsheet.  Notice that it has the medicine, how it is taken, the dose and units of dose, when, who ordered it, their speciality, the time of day and reason it is being taken.

Medicine	Route	Dose	Unit	Timing	From	To	Ordering Physician	Specialty	Timing	Reason
Oxygen	canula	2	liters	sleeping			Fomin, Dimitry	Neurology/Sleep	PM	sleep apnea
CPAP	nasal	6 to 10	cm H20	sleeping			Fomin, Dimitry	Neurology/Sleep	PM	sleep apnea
Tramadol	PO	50	mg	1 or 2 PRN			James Blankenship	Neurosurgeon	PRN	pain

Also, I have a separate worksheet in Excel that has the medicines I have taken in the past so I have a history.

Then, you should create another spreadsheet that has your procedures in it with as so:

Procedure	When	Who	Where	Why
Remove transverse process from T1	5/15/1985	Dr. Carry Couch	Stillwater, OK	Alluvial fracture of spinous process of T1
Rhinoplasty	12/20/1997	Dr. Fincher	Fayetteville, AR	Deviated septum. Left side of nose unusable

Now, when you go to see a new doctor, you don’t have to take all those bottles or try to remember everything.  Just print out the spreadsheets and voila, you are ready.