Calando
A weekly shot is easy to lose track of. Seven days is long enough to forget whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday, the left side or the right, and whether you moved on from last week's spot. A short log answers those questions without relying on memory.
This is about keeping the record. Which sites to use, how far apart, and what to do about a late or missed dose are in your medication's instructions and are questions for your clinician.
What to write down for each shot
- Date and time. The time you actually took it, not the time you planned to. If it was a day late, the log should say so.
- Site and side. Abdomen, thigh or upper arm, and left or right. "Abdomen, left" is enough; some people add "upper" or "lower".
- The dose on your prescription. Copy it as written. The log records what you were told to take; it doesn't decide it.
- A short note, if anything stood out. A late shot, a new pen, how the day went. One line is plenty.
Keeping track of sites
Many people's instructions ask them to use a different spot from one shot to the next. Whatever yours say, the log's job is to make your last few sites visible at a glance, so you're not trying to remember three weeks back.
Two simple ways to do that:
- A running list. The last four or five entries, newest first. You can see the pattern in a second.
- A body map. Mark each site on a simple outline. It shows where you've been more clearly than words do.
Keeping to a schedule
Most weekly schedules are easier to keep when the shot lands on the same day and roughly the same time each week. A reminder an hour or so before helps. If life moves the shot, log the real time anyway; an honest log is more useful than a tidy one.
Reading the log back
- Before an appointment. A list of dates and doses makes it easy to answer "when did you start this dose?" without guessing.
- Gaps. A missing week is obvious in a list, and easy to miss in memory.
- Next to your weight. Seeing shot days on the same timeline as your weight helps you look back at the two together. If you log your weight too, a 7-day average is easier to read than single weigh-ins.
In Calando, the Medication screen counts down to the next shot and shows the next site in your rotation, based on where you injected before; each dose is shown in its pen colour.