About

I came up with the idea for the Symptom Recall application because I was looking in the app store for a way to track my symptoms as a result of breast cancer treatment. In August 2022, I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer (Estrogen Receptor Positive, Stage I/II). I had a lumpectomy, where they also took out some lymph nodes, followed by radiation therapy and medications. In November 2023 I had my ovaries removed (laparoscopy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy) because my hormones were not controlled enough by medications. All of this created lots of symptoms that I struggled to manage while working full time and caring for a high energy elementary aged son. 

Naturally at every appointment, they would ask how I was doing. I had a hard time answering. I like to think that I have a good memory but because I was trying to keep up my normal activities, I would often recognize what was happening with my body and then ignore it as much as possible so I wouldn’t be slowed down. I didn’t want to focus on how I felt because that would mean I was sick and I would start feeling bad for myself. I didn’t talk about it much, not to be private, just because I didn’t want to be a center of attention for cancer treatment. (Apologies if you are reading this and I talk to you on the regular but have never brought up breast cancer. As the saying goes – it’s about me, not you.) Because I was doing such a good job of deflecting, I didn’t have great answers to say how I was doing over time.

I knew the importance of remembering details because I was prescribed meds to treat side effects, which created more side effects, so they gave me drugs for those side effects. I also knew that my care team had no real financial incentive to look at my chart unless I was there for an appointment or they were reviewing labs. I needed to make the most of my time with them so we could work on the best health care plan for my situation. I tried journals to keep track of symptoms. I tried spreadsheets. I tried other apps. It seemed like everything on the market was too simple or required too much time and effort to manage. I’ve spent my career building applications to solve market problems. This time I decided to build the app to solve my problem because I know there are others out there that have the same problem, too.