Long COVID symptom diary: what to record, and how to keep it short
Long COVID is often several symptoms that come and go, and a clinic visit asks you to sum up weeks at once. A short daily diary answers that question from the record instead of from memory.
What to record each day
- Your symptoms, 0 to 10 each. Fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog, chest tightness, racing heart, headache, or your own words. Record the zeros too.
- Sleep, energy and pain, three numbers that give the day context.
- What you did, in a few words, when the day was unusual: a long walk, a full workday, a visit, a bad night. Many clinics ask how activity and symptoms line up over time, and a note is how they see it.
- Anything you took or were prescribed, by name, as you took it.
Keep it to what you can do on a bad day
- Once a day, at the same time, is enough. Hourly logging stops within a week.
- Three symptoms kept for months beat ten symptoms kept for ten days.
- Use "Same as yesterday" when nothing moved.
A copyable daily line
- Date
- Each symptom, 0 to 10
- Sleep (hours), energy, pain
- What was different today
- Taken or prescribed
How Plainlog does it
Plainlog logs a day in about ten seconds and turns a month into one page: a symptom table with averages and days logged, a day-by-day grid and your notes, black on white for printing or sharing on the phone. It records what you enter; it does not measure, interpret or suggest treatment.
Price: Free for 14 days, then $14.99 once. No account, no subscription.
Plainlog records what you enter and reports it back. It does not diagnose, interpret, suggest treatment or calculate anything about medication. It is a notebook, not a clinician.