Late 2008, an ulcer discovered in my esophagus, necessitated keeping track of 
what, how much and when I eat as well as any gastric symptoms (e.g.: burping).

I wrote a simple program, Gastro.  As I have 'played' with it, I have wondered, 
can someone else make use of it?  Is it as user friendly as I think?

As I 'publish' Gastro, for public use, I assume other people do not work in  
databases and are happy that way.  Database? ...

Early in Gastro's development, I needed to add foods, so that has been an edit 
feature from the start.  Use [...] button to the right of the Food list.

My lists of Foods, Quantities and Symptoms are probably not yours.  When Gastro 
starts up with empty lists, it asks if you want mine.  You can accept mine and 
Erase the ones you do not want and add the ones you do.

For the list of Foods, the first column helps the computer search the list.  The 
words are 'scrunched' together in 'CamelCase'.  The food items are listed 
alphabetically.  I use prefixes Bvg for beverages, Rx for prescriptions as well 
as Cake, Cookie, IceCream, Salad, Sandwich, Soup to make it easier to find.  
The second column is the easier to read description.

The list of quantities has numbers in its first column.  I left some gaps 
between some of these numbers to make it easy to insert another quantity in the 
list.  I hope the quantities and their grouping make some sense.  Again the 
second column describes the Quantity.  The [...] button to the right of the 
Quantity list opens the Quantity list editor form.

The list of Symptoms also has a number in its first column.  In this list in 
addition to determining the order of the list, is intended to indicate the 
severity of the symptom.  The second column describes the Symptom Level.  
The [...] button to the right of the Symptom list opens the Symptom list editor 
form.  You can use this form to modify the symptoms to your needs.

The Meal section and Symptom section each have a large text entry field where 
you can add comments for that item.

I usually enter each of the foods for a given meal under the same time.

I found myself 'opening the database' to 'fix' little things:
 (e.g.: time AM/PM, quantity of food)  I have added buttons to make that easier.  

The [Post Meal Item] button is used to save the selected meal and quantity 
under the specified Meal Date and Time.  The [...] button to its right, opens 
the Meal Data Editor form to edit the day's food entries.

The [Post Symptom] button is used to save the selected Symptom Level under the 
specified Symptom Date and Time.  The [...] button to its right, opens the 
Symptom Data Editor form to edit the day's symptom entries.

At the bottom of the form is the [View Days Results] button.  This is used to 
display all of the food and symptom entries for that day (Meal Time date).
I use this to find if I have made all of the intended entries and did I get 
them at the correct time?

To the right of the [View Days Results] button, there is yet another [...] 
button to display and print a listing report to take to your doctor.  A little 
form pops up asking the report date range.  It defaults to a wildly old date and
a wildly future date so if you do not change them you will get a report of all 
data you have entered.  I have added summary parameter controls to allow you to 
filter out the milder symptoms and to specify the range of hours before and 
after the symptom to include meals in the listing report.  I have added a count 
report that provides the count of symptom occurrences for each year-month over 
the specified date range and symptom range.

My doctor was surprised and, I had hoped, pleased when I gave him my report.
As you may have guessed, my doctor did not want the full report a second 
time.  He wanted a summary, so I tried to summarize the 22 page report.
A concern was how much time it would take for staff to 'scan' the report into
my medical records.  Each report is defined by its _.xml and _.xsl files in the 
.\data folder.  If a doctor's office can accept this pair of files for each 
report, they  can be viewed in most any web browser.

I have also added an automatic maintenance feature to periodically 'compact' 
the database for continued good performance.

Oh, by the way, my digestive system is getting better!

I use Gastro daily on Windows XP.  I have had success in running Gastro on 
Windows 7 Home Premium as well as Windows Vista.  There is a separate 
installation file for these newer operating systems.