My mom’s chillin with me in Houston this weekend as I’m getting ready to go back to Pittsburgh to start my second to last semester in the MHCI program (yay!). On our way back to the car from my dad’s room, we were in the parking garage elevator, and my mom said, “I don’t remember what floor we were on. I remember green.”

I’m actually quite impressed with how MD Anderson handles the potentially rampant problem of sick patients forgetting where they park their car. When you first go to the elevator from the garage, you are inundated with a not-so-pretty color…

Limey, no? Be grateful I didn’t snap the Pepto-bismol floor…

Anyway, you don’t have to worry about remembering the number that you parked on (on top of your patient number, your phone number, your address, and your medication dosages – all of which you tend to mention while at Anderson). This way you can remember a color… and it works remarkably well. So when you come back to the elevator…

… you think lime, and you’re off to your car. This, however, only works if you look at the color. If you take my dad’s route of, “I don’t pay attention to that,” then it doesn’t work too well. But let this be another lesson to my Project professors of the power of visualization… through color as a memory aid!