I suspect that most (all?) of us use our home computers to assemble, organize, manage, and "datafy" (neat word I picked up recently) all the information that we collect that relates to our PCa experiences.
There may still be some of us who prefer to use a paper-based approach to doing this, using paper notepads, 3x5 cards, post-it notes, etc. to record and keep this data, and there's nothing wrong with that. Whatever works for the individual.
But the clear advantages of using the automated format, typing into one's computer data for appointment times, appointment meeting notes, prescript
ion records and use, contact information for doctors and other people, summaries of web articles read,
drafts of posts to be made on webforums that one follows, etc., are numerous. Plus the advantages of then being able to manipulate all this data in all sorts of electronic ways make automated control of said data very appealing indeed.
So what is the best data management system one can use, on one's own home computer, for managing all the data that arises during the PCa experience?
The answer is the system that one personally finds most satisfying and effective. A system that can be approached and designed in whatever way the individual finds best, and most useful.
Obviously that makes for a lot of options on how to proceed.
What I would like to do now is describe the format that I myself use on my own home computer, simple as it is, as an example of one way to use a home computer to enter and manage PCa-related data.
Then I would like to invite all of YOU to post below any
variations on doing this that you yourselves use: other ways of doing it, and quite possibly better ways, and ways that could prove helpful for the rest of us to know.
My own way which I will now describe is probably going to be rather "plain vanilla," and some of you may be able to offer some much better ways of doing things.
And I'm sure that I as well could benefit from learning some of the better ways to do it that some of you know and employ.
So, here is essentially what I do:
TEXT DOCUMENTS
Composed and saved as Wordpad files on my hard drive. PCa-relevant ones sorted into and kept in folders:
Doctors (Mostly write-ups of minutes taken at appointments)
Maildrafts (drafts of emails to be sent out to medical persons later)
HWPCcand (thread candidates for posting here on our HW forum)
Healthother (such as webography of good PCa articles)
and kept indefinitely.
EMAIL
I use Gatormail which I used when working and was allowed to keep when I retired:
https://www.mail.ufl.edu/
PCa-relevant emails moved to and kept indefinitely in folders:
Doctors (emails to/from my uro, family doctor, or other medical persons)
Quest (emails from Quest Diagnostics other than PSA test results)
PSA (emails from Quest announcing test results)
Healthinsur (emails from Medicare, or secondary insurer kept from work)
Healthother (such as satisfaction survey from TURP hospital)
Although my email app has it, I have not myself made use of the automated calendaring and schedulng function it provides, preferring simply to use the paper calendar on my desk, making/deleting penciled notations on it as needed. (For me, that's just easier).
APPS
I don't use any PCa-relevant or even cancer-relevant apps on my computer. Of course numerous kinds of such cancer-relevant apps certainly do exist, and are usable for things like fitness and nutrition, medication regimens, PSA graphs, other lab results. etc. But personally I either just keep track of such things mentally, or I use paper notes. So that's pretty much my own more or less simple way of organizing my PCa data on my own PC.
But do any of you do it in what are arguably better ways?
Or do you do something that you find to be especially useful, perhaps something the rest of us may not have thought of, for organizing and using your PCa data on your computer?
If so, please post and tell us about
it. Perhaps we could all benefit from learning about
how YOU do it.