practicalhow-to
A symptom diary that you will actually keep
Five lines a week, kept for months, beats a beautiful spreadsheet abandoned in February — and it is the single thing that makes a short appointment worth having.
Something to hand over
Five-line symptom note
Turn a week of vague dread into five lines you can read out in an appointment that is going to last nine minutes.
Updated 25 June 2026Runs in your browser only
The most useful thing members bring to a short appointment is not a diary. It is five lines. What the symptom is, when it started, what it tracks with, what makes it better or worse, and what you would like to happen next.
This builds those five lines and gives you the text. Nothing is stored, nothing is sent, and closing the tab loses it, so copy it somewhere before you go. Mira, who spent eleven years on a metabolic ward and refuses to interpret anybody's results here, says the last line is the one people leave out and the one that changes the appointment.
Before the appointment
Take it on paper if you can. Members consistently report that reading from a phone gets skimmed and a piece of paper on the desk gets read, which is unfair and appears to be true anyway.
If your symptom is on the short list at when a symptom needs a clinician, do not build a note and wait for an appointment. Be seen. That list is short on purpose.
Longer version of the habit at a symptom diary that you will actually keep, and the nine-minute-appointment tactics are at talking to your GP when time is short.
Guides that go with it
symptoms
When a symptom needs a clinician
The short list this community keeps: the symptoms that mean seek urgent care today rather than asking a forum. Written to be read once now, before anything is wrong.
clinicalhow-to
Talking to your GP when time is short
How to get something useful out of ten minutes — the one-page prep, the opening sentence that changes the appointment, and what to ask for in writing before you leave.
starting
Questions to take to your first appointment
How to turn a vague dread into three specific questions before an appointment that is going to last nine minutes, with the ones members most wish they had asked.
symptoms
Nausea, honestly
Why nausea happens on these medicines, how common it really was in the trials, what several hundred members have found helps, and where it stops being ordinary.