A small card in your wallet takes fifteen minutes to make and can matter enormously if you're found somewhere with your phone locked, dead, or out of reach. For a solo ager it does the job a spouse's voice would otherwise do: it tells strangers who you are, what your body needs, and who to call.
What to include
- Your full name and date of birth
- Critical medical conditions (diabetes, heart condition, epilepsy, dementia diagnosis) and allergies — especially drug allergies
- Medications that emergency staff must know about, above all blood thinners and insulin
- Emergency contact name(s) and phone numbers, in priority order — ideally people from your care team who know your wishes
- Your health care proxy's name and number, marked clearly as the medical decision-maker
- Your primary doctor's name and number
- A note if a pet is home alone — "Cat at home alone" tells responders and your contacts that someone needs to get in and feed her if you're admitted
What to leave off
No Social Security number, no account numbers, no door or alarm codes. A wallet card gets lost or stolen far more often than it gets used in an emergency, so it should contain nothing a thief can spend. Your street address is optional — useful to responders, but weigh it against the fact that your keys are in the same wallet.
Where the copies go
- Wallet: right next to your ID, where responders are trained to look
- Fridge: the standard spot emergency crews check in a home — a File of Life folder is the full-sized version
- Phone lock screen: set up your phone's Medical ID / ICE feature, which shows this information without a passcode
- Your check-in partner: give a copy to whoever would raise the alarm if you went quiet
Keep it current
Print or write several copies in one sitting so updating them later is trivial, and date each card in a corner — a dated card tells a responder how much to trust it. An outdated card can be worse than none — a responder calling a disconnected number loses minutes. Re-check the card whenever a medication changes, a contact moves, or once a year on a date you'll remember. Handwritten is fine; legible is what counts.