Keeping a side-effect diary your doctor can actually use
"I had nausea" is one word of an answer to six questions. The National Institute on Aging publishes the list a doctor works through: when it started, what time of day, how long it lasts, how often, whether it is getting better or worse, and whether it stops you doing things, and a diary that records only the symptom name answers none of them. This is what to write down instead, and the one extra field that matters here and almost nowhere else.
The six questions, quoted
From the NIA's patient page, unedited: "Your doctor will ask when your symptoms started, what time of day they happen, how long they last (seconds? days?), how often they occur, if they seem to be getting worse or better, and if they keep you from going out or doing your usual activities."
Each of those is a field, and each is easy to record at the time and impossible to reconstruct later:
- When it started — a date, not "a few weeks ago".
- What time of day — the field that turns a symptom into a pattern.
- How long it lasted — twenty minutes and two days are different problems.
- How often, which only exists if you also logged the ones mild enough to forget.
- Getting better or worse — a comparison across entries, so it needs more than one.
- Whether it stopped you doing things — the closest thing to a severity measure that does not depend on your mood that day.
The same page adds the questions to ask yourself: "Does anything I do make the symptoms better? Or worse?" That answer belongs in the note field, in your own words.
The seventh field: where it fell relative to the dose
General symptom guidance has no reason to ask this. On a weekly injection it is the single most informative thing a record can hold, because it is the one comparison that separates "I have been feeling rough" from a pattern with a shape: consistently in the day after, consistently as the next one comes due, or scattered with no relation to either.
Note carefully what this does and does not establish. A symptom that repeatedly lands the day after a dose is a sequence, not a proven cause: the trial data behind these medicines includes people on placebo reporting the same complaints. What the pattern does is give the clinician something specific to work from instead of an impression.
Severity: a number you use the same way every time
A scale does not measure anything absolute, and no diary can make "6 out of 10" mean the same thing to two people. What it can do is make your own entries comparable to each other, which is all that "is it getting better or worse" requires. The rule that makes it work is boring: pick a scale and apply it the same way in a bad week and a good one. A scale that quietly drifts upwards when you are frustrated records your frustration.
What else belongs in the record
Two things that are not symptoms, and both are on the FDA's own consumer reporting form for problems with a medicine:
- Everything else you take — prescription and otherwise, including vitamins and supplements. Interactions are the thing a clinician cannot check for in something they were not told about.
- The treatment dates — when this medicine started, and when the dose last changed. Almost every question about whether something is settling is really a question about the weeks since one of those two dates.
A diary is not triage. Severe or sudden symptoms are not something to log and review later. Severe abdominal pain, persistent vomiting, signs of dehydration or of an allergic reaction mean contacting a clinician or your local emergency number now — 911 in the United States and Canada, 999 or 112 in the United Kingdom, 112 across the European Union and Türkiye. The side-effects guide lists what falls into that category. Writing it down afterwards is useful; writing it down instead is not.
What not to write
Two habits make a diary less useful the more diligently they are kept. The first is recording a conclusion instead of an observation — "gastritis" rather than "burning, upper abdomen, two hours after eating, about an hour". The second is recording only the bad days. A run of entries with nothing in it is information: it is what "how often" is measured against, and without it every symptom looks constant.
Three taps, at the time it happens
Eleven common symptoms with a severity you choose, logged when it happens rather than reconstructed at the appointment, and shown against your injections, so the timing is visible rather than remembered. It goes into the doctor report if you include that section.
Download the app See how the journal works →Questions
How often should I write in it?
When something happens, and not otherwise. A diary that requires a daily entry becomes a chore and then a gap; one that captures the events keeps its value even if a fortnight passes with nothing in it.
Is it worth logging something mild?
Yes, and it is the entry people skip. "How often" and "is it getting better" are both counts, and a count built only from the bad days answers a different question than the one being asked.
Should I write what I think caused it?
Write what you noticed, and put the theory in the note as a theory. An observation stays useful when it turns out to have been something else; a conclusion recorded as fact quietly steers everyone who reads it afterwards, including you.
Does my doctor want to see all of it?
Usually the shape rather than every entry: what, how often, how severe, and where it sat relative to the doses. A summary over the period since the last visit is the form that fits into the time an appointment has.
Can a diary tell me whether the medicine is causing it?
No, and neither can this page. It can show that something happens in a consistent relation to your doses, which is a question worth putting to your prescriber: with the dates, so they are looking at the same thing you are.
Educational information, not medical advice. Dozify is a personal tracking app, not a medical device. This page describes how to record your own observations; it does not interpret symptoms, attribute causes or recommend treatment. If you have severe symptoms, seek medical care or call your local emergency number.