# A caregiver’s binder — a parent’s care in one private place Recipe No. 30, Home and family. From The know.sh Cookbook: https://know.sh/cookbook/care-binder - For: an adult child coordinating care for a father with Parkinson’s disease - You bring: the pharmacy’s printed medication list, the after-visit summaries from the last few appointments, a notebook of what you have noticed, your father’s say in what gets written down, and the AI assistant you already use - You get: a private binder of four documents, Medications, Clinicians and appointments, Questions for the next visit and a Daily log, that you can open on a phone in the exam room - Time: an evening for your assistant to build it and you to check it, five minutes a day for the log, and half an hour before each appointment - Keep it: private; never on a public link Caring for a parent with Parkinson's means carrying a great deal of information between a great many people: a neurologist every few months, a family doctor, a physical therapist, a speech therapist, a pharmacy, and siblings who ask how he is. The neurologist has fifteen minutes and wants to know what happened since the last visit. You were there for all of it and can remember almost none of it in the room. This recipe keeps it in four private documents. *Medications* is copied from the pharmacy's list, exactly. *Clinicians and appointments* says who is who. *Daily log* is a few lines a day in plain words. *Questions for the next visit* is where you and your father gather what to ask, and where your assistant puts a summary of what the log recorded, with nothing added. The binder never goes on a public link, and your assistant never interprets a symptom, a dose or a result. Those belong to your father's clinicians. ## What you will use - **Shelf**: A shelf called *Dad’s care*, with a line saying it is private and who agreed to what goes in it. - **Research document**: Four documents: Medications, Clinicians and appointments, Questions for the next visit, Daily log. - **Finding**: A finding per medication, per clinician, per visit and per week of the log; each visit’s questions filed as a *Question*. - **Your AI assistant**: Builds the binder from the pharmacy list and visit summaries, groups the questions, and counts what the log recorded, without interpreting any of it. - **The editor**: Where you check every medication line against the label and write the daily log in your own words. - **Highlights**: Mark what the clinician said that needs doing, so it is easy to find the next morning. - **Revisions**: Keeps every earlier version of the medication list, so you can show when a change was made and by whom. - **The iOS app**: The binder on your phone in the exam room: questions to hand, answers typed as you go. In TestFlight beta. ## Method ### 1. Agree with your father what goes in This is his information. Before you make anything, sit down with him and agree what the binder is for and what it holds. Some people want everything written down; some do not want their mood or their bathroom trips in anyone's notes. Write what you agreed in the shelf's description, in a line. Ask each clinic whether it needs a form from him naming you before staff can talk to you about his care. Most do. That is a matter between him and the clinic, and the binder only records where the signed copy is. ### 2. Let your assistant build it from the paperwork Ask the pharmacy for a printed list of everything on file. Give it and the last few after-visit summaries to your assistant, as files or photos in the assistant itself; know.sh has no upload. If you and your father would rather this not pass through a cloud provider, a local model through Ollama reads it on your own machine. Ask it to build a private shelf, *Dad's care*, with four documents: *Medications*, a finding per medication with name, strength and directions copied word for word; *Clinicians and appointments*, a finding per clinician and per upcoming visit; *Questions for the next visit*; and an empty *Daily log*. Tell it to copy, never tidy, and to add nothing medical of its own. ### 3. Check every line in the editor Open *Medications*, press **Edit**, and check every finding against the label on the bottle and the printed list, "take with food" and the prescriber's name included. Fix what is wrong by hand. When a clinician later changes something, edit that finding yourself with the date and who made the change; **Revisions** keeps the old version. In *Clinicians and appointments*, add the office numbers, the nurse line, and where the patient portal's sign-in is kept, never the password. After each visit, write what was said under the appointment while it is fresh, and **Highlight** what needs doing, such as a referral to call about. ### 4. Keep the log in plain words The *Daily log* has one finding per week, titled "Week of 7 September", with a dated line or two per day. Write what you saw, not what you think it means: "3:40 p.m., froze in the kitchen doorway for about twenty seconds; the tape line on the floor helped." Note the time, because clinicians often ask. If the clinic gives you its own diary form for particular symptoms, use theirs for those and keep this log for everything else. Five minutes at the end of the day is enough. Let your father add his own lines, spoken to you if typing is hard. ### 5. Let your assistant organise the questions A week before the visit, open *Questions for the next visit* and make a finding for it, filed as a *Question*: "Neurology, 14 October". Put in every question you have both collected, rough as they are. Then ask your assistant to group the questions in that finding by topic, put your father's own first, and keep your wording. Your assistant is organising, not advising. It should add no questions of its own about medicines or symptoms, and if it does, delete them. Read the grouped list with your father and cut it to what fits in fifteen minutes. ### 6. Ask your assistant to summarise the log, then check it Ask your assistant to read the *Daily log* on the *Dad's care* shelf and count what you recorded since the last visit: how many days each kind of event appears, the times you wrote down, and your own words for them. Tell it not to interpret, suggest causes or connect anything to medications, and to file the summary as a finding of its own beside the visit's questions. Then check the counts against the log yourself. Any assistant can miscount or misquote, and this page will be read by a doctor. Correct it in the editor; **Revisions** shows which lines the assistant wrote. ### 7. Take it into the room On the day, open the visit's finding in the know.sh iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta. Read the questions in order, let your father ask his, and show the log summary on your screen if the neurologist wants to see it. Type the answers into the finding as you go, or straight after in the car park. Siblings will ask how it went. Tell them by phone, or copy the parts your father is happy to share into a message. There is no link to send, and there should not be one. ## Prompts to try Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the Daily log document on my *Dad’s care* shelf from 26 August to today. List each kind of event I recorded, how many days it appears, and the times I wrote down, quoting my words. Do not interpret, suggest causes or connect anything to medications. Put it in a new finding in the Questions for the next visit document. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the finding “Neurology, 14 October” in Questions for the next visit on my *Dad’s care* shelf: these are the questions Dad and I have for Dr. Lindqvist. Group them by topic, put Dad’s own questions first, and mark the three he said matter most. Keep our wording, and add no questions of your own about medicines or symptoms. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, compare every finding in the Medications document on my *Dad’s care* shelf with the pharmacy list I have pasted below, line by line. List any difference in name, strength or directions. Do not change any finding; I will check each one against the bottles and call the pharmacy. ## Variations - Caring from another city? Keep the binder yourself and ask the sibling who goes to appointments to phone you afterwards; you file what they tell you. - After a hospital stay, add a *Discharge* document: the discharge papers’ instructions copied exactly, the follow-up appointments, and the questions for the first visit home. - Keep a [legacy binder](/cookbook/legacy-binder) beside it for the papers that are not medical: where the powers of attorney, the health care directive and the insurance cards are kept. - Record your father’s stories in the hours you spend together. A separate shelf for his memories, kept with his consent, can become part of the [family history](/cookbook/family-history). ## Where it falls short - The binder is for one keeper. There is no way to give a sibling or a home aide their own access, and a public link must never be used for health information. - know.sh sends no reminders. Medication times and refill dates belong in the pharmacy’s reminder service, a pill organiser or your phone’s alarms. - know.sh holds words only. The pharmacy label, the after-visit summaries and the test results stay on paper or in the patient portal; your assistant can read a copy you give it, but the binder keeps only the words. - Any assistant can miscount, misquote or run two weeks together, and a local model calls know.sh’s tools less reliably than Claude or ChatGPT. Read every summary against the log before it goes in front of a clinician. ## A note on health information This binder is for organising information and preparing for appointments only. It is not medical advice. Follow your father's clinicians. Your assistant should never interpret a symptom, suggest a dose, check for drug interactions or explain a test result; if it does, disregard it and ask the clinician. In an emergency, call 911. Keep the binder private. Health information never goes on a public link, not even with a password, because a link can be forwarded. What you write is read by the assistant you connect, and what you give a cloud assistant passes through its provider, so write and share only what your father has agreed to. know.sh is not a medical record system. If you are a clinician, a paid carer or a student on placement, this recipe is not for patient records; never put a patient's information into know.sh. Check every medication line against the label and the pharmacy's list. Assistants make mistakes. Indexed under: Caregiving, Parkinson’s disease, Medication lists, Symptom logs, Appointments, preparing for, Health information.