Since I was a child when most of them occurred I need to go back to that old standby of a personal health record – my mother.

My childhood general practitioner is no longer alive and so the voluminous health record he compiled on me from age 3 until I left my parent’s home – and their health coverage – at age 23 is no longer available to me (yet another great reason to create my own online health record).

I once saw the medical history my GP kept on me. Good golly, with 20 years of annotations on all my visits and the care he gave me, the thing looked two feet tall.

And my mother remembers most of the major things within it.

My age when I had my surgery to correct my crossed left eye. The year I sprained my wrist leaping sloppily over the horse in gymnastics. The day we discovered my penicillin allergy ("you swelled up like a blowfish"). She doesn’t remember the dates of my immunizations, but she remembers which ones I had.

The woman is my walking, talking, hugging, personal health record.

My online PHR, while it never tells me it loves me as I log out, does offer me 26 immunizations from which to select, from Anthrax to Yellow Fever, with even the Plague thrown in for good measure. There’s also a section on "combination vaccines" – the Diphitheria/Tetanus/Pertussis (DtaP), the Measles/Mumps/Rubella (MMR) and the Tetanus and Diphtheria booster (Td).

So I check off the immunizations I know I’ve had and then I call my mother, also known as Keeper of All The Important Information About My Childhood Health History.

"Mom, did I ever get the chickenpox vaccine?"

"Yes, you did."

"What about for the mumps?"

"Nope, missed that one. We were about to have you get it, but then you got the mumps. Don’t you remember? You practically chewed your inner cheeks off for some reason. Dr. Freeman couldn’t figure out why, but you told him it somehow made you feel better if you gave the sides of the inside of your mouth a quick nibble every now and then. You even said nibble. I was so proud of you at age 6 that you kn.."

"Mom! That’s OK. What about the measles vaccination. How old was I?"

"Five. Oh, and before you ask me, we found out you were allergic to penicillin – you swelled up like a blowfish; if I’d stuck you with a pin, you would have exploded – three days after your third birthday. I remember it so well because, as worried as we were about you – you were so very sick – you looked so cute. So cute. So chubby cheeked after that shot. I felt bad for thinking you looked so cute, but, well, you did. Sicker than a dog, but the cutest little thing. And as soon as you got the antidote or whatever they called it – the thing that fixed your reaction to the penicillin, you well, you ‘deflated’ quickly. And we were so happy."

That’s my mother – the human memory chip.