Your people

You can probably name the doctor without thinking. Most of us can.

Now try the rest. Who do you call when the surgery is closed. Who has a spare key. Who knows which pharmacy holds the script. Who would you actually ring at nine at night.

That list already exists. It lives in your head, it updates itself, and it works perfectly well right up until the day you are not the one holding it.

This month’s sheet is the smallest possible version of fixing that. One page, one sitting, nothing to keep up to date.

Who’s on your team

Start wider than you think.

Not only the medical people. The neighbour who brings the bins in. The cousin who is good on the phone with government departments. The friend who has done this before and will answer a text at midnight.

Most of us have more people than we think we have. We just have them scattered across a contacts list, a fridge door, and the memory of a conversation from two years ago.

Writing them in one place is not admin. It is the difference between saying “I’ll sort it out” and somebody else being able to.

What each of them knows

This is the part that matters more than the names.

“Neighbour” tells somebody nothing. “Lives two streets away, has a key, knows the back door sticks” tells them everything.

So next to each person, write the useful thing. Not their relationship to you. What they can actually do at four in the afternoon on a Wednesday.

A few that come up again and again:

• who can get in the front door
• who knows the routine well enough to run a day without being talked through it
• who handles the money and the forms
• who the person you care for will actually listen to

That last one is not unkind. It is just true, and it saves somebody a very long afternoon.

Who picks up the phone when you can’t

A while back my dad had a fall. I was two hours away.

I sat in the car and scrolled through fifteen numbers, trying to work out which one to ring first. I knew every single one of them. I still lost ten minutes deciding.

A list is not a plan. An order is.

So the sheet asks for first, not for everyone. One name at the top. The person who gets rung before anyone else, and what they can do once they answer.

Then the after hours line. Not the number printed on the website. The one that is actually picked up at 2am.

When you would actually use it

Nobody reaches for a sheet like this on an ordinary day. That is fine. It is built for the days that are not ordinary.

A hospital admission, where somebody asks you eleven questions in the first ten minutes and you cannot remember the cardiologist’s name.

A week where you are the one who is sick, and somebody else is doing Tuesday.

A funeral, a work trip, a surgery of your own. Any stretch where the whole thing has to run without you for a bit.

And the quiet one. The day you hand it to a sibling who has been saying “let me know how I can help” for three years, and finally they can.

The box people leave blank

There is a box on this sheet called “who to call for you”.

Not for the person you care for. For you.

It is the one people skip. I skipped it for years, and I helped write the thing.

October is National Carers Week, which is as good a reason as any to fill it in. If the honest answer is that there is nobody, that is worth knowing too, and it is fixable.

Carer Gateway is free and answers on 1800 422 737. In South Australia the local service is Carers SA, who do counselling, coaching and respite, including the emergency kind. You do not need a diagnosis, a plan, or a good enough reason. You need to be somebody who looks after somebody.

What is on the sheet

Ten boxes, one page:

• Who to call first
• The GP and the pharmacy
• The specialists
• Who has a key
• Who knows the routine
• Money and paperwork
• Who to call for you
• What to say when you call
• Who not to call, and why
• After hours

“Who not to call, and why” surprises people. It earns its place. Most families have one number that makes a hard day harder, and it is a kindness to write that down before somebody else finds out the slow way.

Half full is fine

You will not know all of it. Nobody does.

Fill in what you know, leave the rest, and put it on the fridge. A half finished sheet on the fridge beats a perfect one you never printed.

Come back to it when something changes. Pencil is fine. Crossing out is fine.

Made to pass on

The whole point of this one is that it works when you are not there.

So print two. Keep one, and give the other to the person who would step in. Put it in the hospital bag. Leave it with the folder. Stick it inside a kitchen cupboard door where anybody would find it.

Fill it in with a pen, not a password. Then hand it over.