Caregiving Series-It's A Lot!

If you are a follower of the blog, you know that my husband and I have gotten to the point in our lives that we are caregivers for his parents. For a while, it wasn't that big a deal; some cancer dr appts and keeping up with my father in law's care for his Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. But, right before Christmas, everything changed. My father in law had called and told me that his ankles were very swollen, which we had been told to let the dr know immediately if that happened. They instructed us to go to the walk in care clinic who instructed us to go straight to the ER. This started a whirlwind of hospital and doctors. He was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, this on top of the leukemia and emphysema. He had to have 3 liters of fluid drained from one lung. The first hospital visit, they put him on blood thinners which interacted with his cancer treatment and made his blood pressure drop to 73/37. That ended up in another ER/hospital stay. Now, I am not only keeping up with the cancer dr, but the cardiologist, regular doctor, pulmonologist, and a urologist because they also found a mass on his bladder. I do believe that taking care of aging parents requires better organizational skills than a newborn. If you are in the same boat as us, than you know what I mean. Doctors, medications, appointments, it all can overwhelm you if you are not careful. I have my trusty calendar that is full of appointments, and my trusty phone that is full of information. I've even been giving thought to getting a small notebook to keep in my pocketbook to keep all the information that is needed in. What are some ways that you stay organized and on top of the wave of information that you have to have stored? Let me know in the comments any ideas that I haven't come up with yet. I'll keep you posted on how my father in law is doing. He goes for surgery in 2 weeks for that mass. That's with the urologist. I remembered! LOL