Thank Your Past Self

--Rebecca--

Please take a moment and think about something you did in the past, that makes your present situation better.

When I started caring for my parents, as I began each visit, I made a new note on my phone. It was always titled Thank You! Each time I benefited from one of my past actions, I put a hash tag on my note. For example, If I took a frozen lasagna out of the freezer that I made last month-Thank You! I hid an extra copy of important passwords. Now they are the only copy-Thank You, past self! I keep a Google Drive with all of our important Documents on it. The dentist wants to see medical POA. Ta-da, it's right here. Thank you, me. My past self, thank you. If I don't thank you, no one else will. And you are amazing.

So readers, please post something you did a while back that made life easier today.

SusanB-dil

Interesting post. Thanks. making me think…

Glad I found this forum and learned more about 'this' before I needed to know it and before more shtuff hit that proverbial fan.

Mike in NC

Well done!

I just loaded Mom's will, POA, living will, and healthcare POA on Google Drive last week, along with her prescriptions, doctor and pharmacy contact info, medical history, pictures of her insurance cards, etc. and shared the folder with my wife and adult daughter so that we'll have them handy in an emergency.

This week, I set up online access to my mother's Medicare and Blue Cross accounts so that I can watch for any outstanding bills to be paid. I already had my own account as a trusted family member with her primary care doctor so can watch for bills there as well. Now I'm working on adding HIPAA authorization at her dentist.

I find using a password keeper like LastPass, 1Password, or Keeper to be well worth the annual fee. We do a family plan so that several of us can have our own accounts at a reduced cost and easily share passwords securely when needed. It also has a feature to grant a trusted family member emergency access to my passwords if something happened and I were incapacitated.