Preparing For Your Appointment

Preparing for your appointment: I ask a large variety of questions and sometimes patients are a little overwhelmed with the complexity of my questions, but I tend to ask when the migraines actually started, at what age, what type of headaches you may have, including any variety of different types of headaches. I may ask how frequent they are, where the pain is located, if anything obviously triggers them, if anything obviously makes the headaches better, what kind of medications you take, what kind of medications you may take to help the headaches if you’ve tried anything in the past to prevent them ( including even in the past 10 years or more.) If you’ve had any testing, if you’ve had any past medical history including even a head injury that may have triggered the headaches. I also want to know about your family’s history. I would love it if patients brought a medication list, including the medications they’re currently taking and the medications they’ve tried and failed in the past. That would help me tremendously so that I don’t repeat history and make them try medications over and over again that they’ve already failed. I would love it if they brought me a headache journal telling me what their headaches are like over the past two, three, four months. I don’t need anything complicated. Just write down: “It’s a 7 out of 10.” “It always hits in the morning.” “It always hits when I’m exercising” or something like that. Or “it always hits around my menstrual cycle.” Some sort of pattern so that I can figure that out.