"Of the many things you’ll need to manage for yourself in life at some point — and if you’re a person in your teens or 20s, probably need to already do to some degree or will need to start doing soon — managing your own healthcare may be one that feels particularly complex, all the more so if you’re disabled or chronically ill. In an era where healthcare systems around the world, be they private or public, keep becoming increasingly more difficult to access and navigate, and where what care we can access and how we access it may be threatened, limited or in a state of flux, it can all feel especially overwhelming.
That’s why we created this toolkit to help you organize, chronicle, sort through, and communicate your healthcare needs for yourself and anyone else involved in the care and keeping of you and your body. It’s only going to be full of the information about you, your health, and everything involved that you provide. You can change up any headings or sections that don’t work for you, and you can use this in digital spreadsheet, digital or word document, printed or DIY-journaling form, whichever works best for you.
You can also think about this toolkit as a way of organizing some parts of your care web, a personal community and living system of care and support. The idea of care webs generally positions them as being about mutual or reciprocal support, and you may have roles in your own care web that are about the help you give others. This is for the care, and supports for that care, that you need, and a tool for you to organize your own care.
The three of us who’ve co-created this are all people who have long had varied, ongoing and complex healthcare needs. One of us gets their care through a national healthcare system, and two of us have used public health and private insurance. The form itself is even based on the form one of us — s.e. — created for himself and still uses to manage his own care."
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
stormborns
2087
