A lot of symptom logs are not kept by the person with the symptoms. They are kept by a spouse, a parent, an adult child, sometimes a friend. The person who needs the record is too unwell, too tired, too disorganised by the condition itself, or simply will not do it.
If that is you, the record you keep is genuinely valuable, and it is valuable in a way theirs is not. You see things they cannot see about themselves.
It also needs to be kept differently, and this guide is about the differences.
Start by asking them
Before anything else: they should know you are doing it, and they should agree to it.
That is partly a matter of respect, and it is partly practical. A log kept in secret is a log they cannot correct, cannot add to, and may object to when it matters most. A log they know about is one they will occasionally look at and say "no, that was Thursday," which makes it better.
If the person cannot meaningfully agree — advanced dementia, for instance — then keep it in the way you would want someone to keep a record about you: factual, unsentimental, and without editorialising about them as a person.
Separate what you saw from what they told you
This is the single most important habit, and it is easy.
Two different things go into a caregiver's log, and they are different kinds of evidence:
What you observed. You saw it happen. You were there.
Slept until 2pm. Came downstairs, did not eat, went back up at 4. I did not see him again until the next morning.
What they reported. They told you about it. You are recording their account faithfully, not vouching for it.
He said the pain had been there since he woke and was about a 7. Said he had not been able to get comfortable at all in the night.
Both belong in the log. They just need to be distinguishable, and the plain words "I saw" and "he said" do the whole job. No system, no formatting convention, just the ordinary way of talking about it.
The reason this matters: your direct observations are something the person cannot provide themselves. Nobody can watch their own bad day from outside. If your observations are mixed indistinguishably with their reports, they lose that quality and become a second-hand version of what they would have written anyway.
Write down what you had to do
This is the caregiver's equivalent of the functional-impact line, and it is the part most caregivers leave out because it feels like complaining.
It is not complaining. It is a record of the effect.
Drove him to the appointment because he was not up to it. Did the shopping on my own again. Took the day off to be here. Slept in the other room so I would not wake him. Reminded him about the medication twice, both times he had forgotten.
Each of those is a factual consequence of the condition, observable, and dated. Together, over months, they show a great deal about what the condition actually costs.
Write them flatly. No adjectives about how hard it has been on you, however true. The flat version is stronger and it is easier to read.
Keep your assessment out of it
You will form opinions. You will be right about most of them. They still do not go in the log.
Not this:
He is much worse than he admits to the doctors. He minimises everything.
That may well be true and it may be worth saying out loud to a service officer or a clinician. But in a log it converts an observational record into an argument, and it invites a reader to weigh your view of him rather than what you saw.
Instead, write the observations that gave you the opinion:
At the appointment he told the doctor he was "doing all right." He had spent three of the previous seven days in bed and had not driven since the 4th.
That says the same thing and it says it with facts. Anyone reading it can draw the conclusion themselves, which is a much stronger way to have it drawn.
When you disagree about how bad a day was
It happens constantly. He says it was fine. You watched him lose the afternoon.
Record both, plainly, in the same entry:
He said it was a mild day. He slept from about 1 to 4 and did not come down for dinner.
Do not resolve the disagreement in the log and do not pick a winner. The two statements sitting next to each other are more informative than either one alone, and the difference between them is itself a real and repeated feature of a lot of conditions.
The mechanics are the same
Everything from the other guides still applies. Same date the thing happened, not the date you wrote it. One consistent severity scale, and if you are scoring, note whose score it is. Duration. Write it the same day. Log the quiet days too, because a caregiver's log needs a denominator just as much as anyone's.
One addition: note when you were not there. A gap in your observations is not a gap in their symptoms, and a line saying so keeps the record honest.
Away Thursday and Friday. He said Friday was a bad one but I did not see it.
Look after the person keeping the log
Worth saying plainly, because caregiver logs tend to be kept by people running short.
Keep the entries short. A caregiver's log that takes fifteen minutes a night will stop within a month, and a record that stops is worth much less than a thinner one that continues. Two lines is a complete entry. Some nights one line is.
And if there is a claim in progress, the person you are caring for is not the only one who may be entitled to support. That is a conversation for a service officer, not for me, but it is worth having.
The short version
Say who saw what. Your own observations are the thing you can provide that they cannot, so keep them distinguishable from what you were told. Record what you had to do as well as what they experienced. Keep your conclusions out and let the facts carry them. Note when you were not there. Keep it short enough that you will still be doing it in six months.