I'm an organizer, a plan-maker, a woman of many lists. It's all part of my Type A personality -- the one that contributes to a bit of stress but also helps me stay on top of things. I like staying on top of things.

Lists have become more important to me than ever, thanks to cancer and chemo and my forgetful brain. If I want to remember something, I must write it down. If I let just a moment pass without recording the thought I want to keep, it's gone. So I have ongoing grocery lists, household to-do lists, task lists, even lists of questions I want to ask my doctor. Since I see my doctors just once every few months, I keep a running list. Sometimes the list is quite long when I arrive for my appointment. Sometimes I don't have time to cover each topic. Sometimes I transfer questions onto future lists.

It would be nice if I could get all my medical questions answered at each visit. I once read that the typical amount of time a doctor spends with a patient is eight minutes -- so it makes sense I never cross off all my list items. But in the future, I may do better at covering my bases, thanks to this advice I found in the in the July 2007 issue of Good Housekeeping.

According to Ming Tai-Seale, Ph.D., associate professor at Texas A&M University School of Rural Public Health, we should begin our appointments by offering our doctors an overview of what we'd like to ask. This way, doctors and patients can decide which problems need to be addressed first and which can be saved for follow-up exams or can be handled in a different way. I may not get answers for everything this way, but I stand a better chance of gathering the most critical information.

Tai-Seale arrived at her suggestion after analyzing videotapes of 400 doctor's visits. She noted that, on average, six topics were discussed per each 16-minute session (that's a long visit). While the longest question typically got five minutes of talk time, the others got far less or were skipped altogether.

So for my next appointment, which happens to be next week, I'm jotting down everything but preparing to cover only the most urgent items. Sounds like a good plan to me. We Type A folks love a good plan.