I brought the binder to appointments. I brought it to the emergency room the two times we went there. I brought it to the hospital for the elective procedure she had in year nine, and the intake nurse looked at it and said, “I wish all our patients had someone like you.”
I thanked her. I put the binder in my bag. I went and sat in the waiting room with a book I didn’t read.
The binder doesn’t appear in the folder as an expense. It was my time and my organizational system and I don’t know how to calculate what it was worth. I’m not saying it had a price. I’m saying it was real.
There was an incident in year eight that I still think about.
Mom had an appointment with the neurologist — Dr. Ramesh, who had been monitoring her cognition for three years. I had flagged a pattern I’d noticed: she seemed to have more confusion in the late afternoon than at other times of day, and I wanted to mention it to him.
He assessed her, asked questions, did the mini cognitive exam she’d done at every visit. When we were done, he turned to me.
“Mrs. Bennett’s baseline seems stable,” he said. “You mentioned an afternoon pattern?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been tracking it for about six weeks.” I pulled out the notebook where I’d been keeping daily observations — time, what I noticed, any relevant context like whether she’d slept poorly or skipped lunch.