After years of tracking experiences across five different apps and waking up at 3am wondering if I was imagining patterns, I built the tool I needed.
Here's what it actually does.
The 3am Problem
You know the feeling.
You wake up in the middle of the night. Pain is radiating. Your stomach feels like it's being cinched by barbed wire.
You lie there thinking: Why is this happening? Does this feel different than usual? Is it an infection? A cyst? Or did this happen last month at the exact same time?
You're playing detective with your own body while your body is actively screaming at you.
This exact moment—lying awake, second-guessing my own body, wondering if I'm imagining things—is the moment I've been building for.
I realized we deserve a tool that actually supports us, meets us where we're at, and was built for us.
The Gap Nobody Is Filling
There are a thousand health tracking apps. Period trackers. Symptom loggers. Food diaries. Pain apps.
But none of them understand what we actually need.
They aren't built for validation: They don't help people fighting to be believed by doctors.
They aren't built for brain fog: They don't help when you have 20 minutes to explain three months of confusion.
They aren't built for nuance: Generic trackers don't know that bladder pressure at 3am hits different than bladder pressure at 3pm.
We need one place that gets it. Designed for this specific fight.
What Penny Actually Does
Penny is a pelvic health documentation app. You track what providers actually need to see, document complete stories of difficult days, and generate professional reports so both you and your provider can make the most of limited appointment time.
I built the prototype of this system manually during my own medical crisis (you can read the full story in the Invisible War series).
Here's what's in the app:
1. Bathroom Diary
This is the #1 thing providers ask for. You log every bathroom event—urination or bowel movement—with the details that actually matter:
- Timestamp (auto-fills)
- Urgency level (none to severe)
- Volume or completeness
- Discomfort (0-5 scale)
- Optional notes
Penny calculates stats automatically: total events per day, day vs. night breakdown, urgency percentages, average discomfort, peak times.
This is the kind of data that makes a provider sit up and pay attention.
Read the deep dive: Why traditional bladder diaries fail →
2. Wellness Check-Ins
Brief check-ins that capture the context around your data.
- Morning: Includes sleep quality
- Evening: Reflects on whether you paced yourself or pushed too hard
You rate physical discomfort, emotional state, energy level, and stress—all on simple 0-5 scales. Quick enough to do in brain fog, comprehensive enough to spot patterns over time.
Read the deep dive: The missing context in symptom tracking →
3. Quick Notes
Sometimes you just need to capture something fast. A food that didn't sit right. A stressful moment. Something you want to remember for your next appointment.
Quick Notes are brain fog-friendly: 500 characters max, optional tags (Food, Stress, Activity, Medication), automatic timestamps.
Tag a note as "Question for Provider" and it shows up automatically when you're preparing for your next appointment.
4. Episodes: The Innovation
This is the feature that doesn't exist anywhere else.
Generic trackers give you disconnected snapshots: Pain = 7/10. Urgency = 8/10. But that doesn't tell the story. It doesn't show what led up to it, what happened during, or what finally helped.
Episodes capture the complete narrative of a difficult day.
You start an Episode when things go sideways. Everything you log during that time—bathroom events, wellness check-ins, quick notes—automatically links to that Episode. When things calm down, you end it with a summary: what helped, what you learned.
The result? Complete case studies your provider can review in minutes.
Read the deep dive: Why timestamps aren't enough →
5. Appointments Hub
This handles the complete appointment lifecycle, from scheduling through follow-up.
Before your visit: Penny pulls in any notes you've tagged as questions. You configure your report and generate it before you walk in.
After your visit: Log what they said, what the next steps are, and how you felt about the care you received.
Read the deep dive: The document that changed everything →
6. Professional Reports
This is the feature that saved me.
Penny generates professional, text-based reports that combine everything: bathroom stats, wellness trends, Episode summaries, and your notes.
You export it as a PDF with all the proper disclaimers so your provider knows this is your documented observations.
It turns months of confusion into a clear, data-driven story.
Who This Is Actually For
If you don't have a diagnosis yet: You need concrete data so your next appointment isn't just "it hurts," but "I've logged 18 high-urgency bathroom events daily for three weeks."
If you were recently diagnosed: You're overwhelmed and don't know what to track. Penny focuses on what actually matters for pelvic and bladder conditions.
If you've been managing this for years: You're tired of five different apps and want one place that connects everything.
What Happens Next
Penny launches in beta in January 2026.
I'm looking for people dealing with bladder pain, pelvic pain, or unexplained pelvic experiences who want to test it, break it, tell me what's missing, and help shape what this becomes.
Just a chance to be part of building something that might actually help.