Preparing for a migraine appointment: a checklist

Updated 2026-07-17 · General information, not medical advice

A typical appointment gives you a handful of minutes to describe months of your life. That's the real constraint migraine care operates under — and it's why headache clinics and patient organizations, from the National Migraine Centre to the National Headache Foundation, ask patients to arrive with a diary rather than a memory. Preparation isn't about impressing your doctor. It's about making those minutes count.

This checklist covers what to gather beforehand, how to compress it, and how to leave the room with what you came for.

The numbers your clinician will probably want

Different clinicians ask differently, but the core questions are stable. Walk in able to answer these with numbers, not impressions:

• Headache days per month. The single most-asked figure. If you track no-headache days too, your count is credible rather than guessed.
• Attack character. Typical severity, duration, one side or both, throbbing or pressing, and what makes it worse.
• Associated symptoms. Nausea, light or sound sensitivity, aura or visual changes, dizziness — whatever accompanies your attacks.
• Function impact. Days missed from work or study, plans cancelled, days you pushed through at half capacity. Impact often shapes decisions as much as pain scores.
• Medication use. Every headache-related medication — prescription and over-the-counter — with doses and, critically, how many days per month you take something for an attack.
• What's changed. New patterns, new symptoms, or a shift in frequency since your last visit.

Summarize, then bring the detail

A diary's value at an appointment depends on its readability. Forty screenshots or a fat notebook forces your clinician to spend the appointment doing data entry with their eyes. The better format is layered:

1. One-page summary on top. Monthly headache days, medication days, typical attack description, and the reason for this visit.
2. The diary table behind it. Day-by-day entries for the recent period, for anything they want to verify.
3. Honesty about gaps. If you only tracked six of the last twelve weeks, say so. A record that admits its gaps is more useful than one that quietly pretends completeness.

Gather the history once, reuse it forever

Beyond the recent diary, first appointments — and any referral to a specialist — usually reach further back. It's worth writing this history down once, keeping it somewhere you can find, and updating it occasionally rather than reconstructing it in the waiting room each time:

• When your headaches started, even approximately, and how they've changed over the years.
• What you've already tried — medications and other approaches, with your best recollection of doses, how long you gave each one, and why it stopped: didn't help, side effects, or simply fizzled out. "Tried and abandoned after a week" and "tried at full dose for three months" are very different facts.
• Relevant context: other conditions, other regular medications, allergies, and family history of migraine if you know it.

This one-time effort pays off at every subsequent appointment, because "what have you tried?" is otherwise the question that eats the most minutes for the least accuracy.

Write your questions down before you go

Almost everyone forgets their questions mid-appointment — more so if you're attending during or just after an attack. Keep a running list between visits, on paper or in whatever you use daily. Common categories people ask about include:

• Diagnosis: "Does my pattern fit migraine, or something else worth ruling out?"
• Red flags: "Which changes should make me seek urgent care?"
• Their plan: "What are we trying between now and next visit, and how will we judge whether it worked?"
• Practicalities: referrals, sick notes, what to do on days when nothing helps.

Prioritize your top three. If the appointment runs short, you'll have asked what mattered most.

During and after

• Lead with your summary. "Eleven headache days last month, four severe, medication on eight days" orients a clinician in one sentence.
• Agree on what to track next. If a change is planned, ask what your diary should capture so the next appointment can evaluate it fairly — that's exactly the before-and-after comparison a consistent diary makes possible.
• Note the plan immediately. Write down what was decided while it's fresh: changes, review dates, and what should prompt an earlier return.

Related reading

• How to keep a migraine diary your doctor can use
• How to track migraine medications accurately
• Identifying migraine triggers with a diary

Sources: National Migraine Centre — Headache Diary · National Headache Foundation — Tracking Diaries · American Migraine Foundation — Headache Journals. This article is general information, not medical advice.