Key takeaways
- Memory blurs bad days together. A dated log keeps them apart, which is exactly what an examiner needs.
- Four columns are enough: date and time, where it hurts, what brought it on, what you took or did.
- Paper beats the phone for most of our readers, because the phone is the thing that hurts to look at.
- The log is not a substitute for the exam. It is what makes the exam start from facts instead of guesses.
We ask every reader to do one thing before the exam, and it is not a stretch or a supplement. It is a notebook. Headache is invisible from the outside and blurry from the inside, and the single most useful thing you can carry into an exam room is a dated account of the days since the crash. Here is how to keep one that a clinician can actually use.
Why dates beat adjectives
When people describe a headache, they reach for adjectives. Pounding, splitting, constant, terrible. Those words are true and they are nearly useless to an examiner, because everyone uses them. What an examiner can work with is a timeline: the crash was the 14th, the neck was stiff on the 15th, the headache started the 16th in the afternoon, it is worse after driving and better after lying down, it has been every day since.
The reason is that a timeline can be compared. The findings at the first exam become a baseline. Two weeks later, better or worse is a real question only if there is a record of what it was. Your log is the first page of that record, written by the only person who was there every day.
The four columns
Keep it to four. More than that and the log becomes a chore, and a chore gets abandoned on the third day.
- Date and time. Every line. If the headache started at 3pm, write 3pm. If it was there when you woke up, write that.
- Where. Base of the skull, over the left eye, a band across the forehead, the whole head. Which side of the neck is stiff, if either.
- What brought it on or made it worse. Driving, screens, looking down, turning to the right, light, noise, getting up too fast. Or nothing you noticed; write that too.
- What you did. Lay down, took an over-the-counter painkiller and which one, heat, ice, slept. And whether it helped, for how long.
A fifth line, once, at the top of the first page: the date and time of the crash, what kind of hit it was, whether your head struck anything, and whether you felt dazed. That single paragraph is the most important thing in the book.
Paper, for a reason
We suggest paper because the phone is the thing that hurts to look at. A small notebook by the bed, a pencil inside it, and the habit of writing a line before you lie down. If the phone is easier for you, a plain notes app works; just keep the date on every entry and do not let the app's formatting eat the column structure. What matters is that it exists and that it is dated.
What not to bother with
Do not rate pain on a ten-point scale unless you want to; the numbers drift and the examiner will ask in their own way. Do not research what the pattern means and write your conclusions in the log; write what happened and leave the meaning to the exam. Do not edit. A line that says "fine all day" is as useful as a line that says "bad from noon on," because it is the contrast that tells the story.
Handing it across the desk
Bring the notebook to the first visit along with any emergency room paperwork and the crash date. If you already have an attorney, bring their contact so records can be sent where they need to go; that is a logistics line, not advice about anything. Hand the log over, or read from it, and let the examiner ask the questions. Then keep writing after the visit. The log does not end at the exam; it is the thread that runs through the treatment plan and every visit after.
Educational reading, not medical advice. This desk cannot examine anyone; it exists to get you in front of someone who can.