Newbie alert. Has anyone found an easy way to make the string in the "Special Instructions or Order Comments" box in the checkout subsystem persistent across a user's session?

My application is unusual (well, maybe not): I'm driving around in a van performing surgery on large animals. As localhost (no internet), I choose surgical products/services, add them to my cart, calc sales tax, and print an invoice. Hand invoice to customer and pick up a check. Back at the main veterinary office, hand 2nd copy of invoice to accounting and they enter the data into the "real" accounting system. No online store or direct integration to the accounting system, etc. Really simple -- maybe too simple, I'm spending a huge amount of time crippling Zencart features.

What I really need is an "Additional Customers Fields" add-in that works, but after reading all about the troubles with this code and downloading the add-in and looking it over, there's no way that I want to use it. I need to print 8 additional fields related to the animal. Storing in the database would be nice but not essential.

Zencart v1.3.8 (plus "Column Layout Grid for Product Listing" add-in) running under zampp-lite windoze XP Firefox browser. THANKS!