A home infection prevention checklist

One sheet with four things on it: the fever rule, the daily routine, what changes during the low-count days, and the numbers to call. Stuck where the household actually is — the fridge, or beside the bed — not filed away in a folder.

The point is not that anyone forgets the rules. It is that at eleven at night, with a frightened family and a thermometer reading, nobody wants to be remembering what somebody said at an appointment three weeks ago.

Write it out rather than printing something generic

A sheet you write yourself can carry your own low-count dates, your hospital's name, and whatever your team told you specifically. That is what makes it useful. Take the headings below to your next appointment and have the nurse fill in the blanks.

These are what turn a general sheet into your sheet, and they are the reason it is worth taking the headings to an appointment rather than printing something off.

Ask for these five answers

Which days after each cycle are the low-count days. What temperature reading they want you to act on. Which number to call in the day, and which at night and weekends. Which hospital to go to if you cannot reach anyone. And whether there is anything specific to your treatment that is not on this list.

Write the treatment details on it too

The regimen name, the date of the last cycle and the date of the next. Any hospital you reach in an emergency will ask, and a family member arriving without the file needs to be able to answer.

Redraw it every cycle

The low-count dates move when a cycle is delayed or the dose changes. An out-of-date sheet is worse than none, because people follow it with confidence. Put the date on it.

Name one person as the keeper of it

Sheets that belong to everybody get updated by nobody. Agree who rewrites it each cycle and who checks the thermometer still works. It takes two minutes a month and it is the difference between a live document and a piece of paper that went out of date in March.

Decide the night-time plan while things are calm

Which hospital, who drives, who stays with anyone else at home. Making that decision in advance is worth more than any of the daily precautions, because it is the one that gets made badly under pressure.