New Daily Persistent Headache
If a headache arrived one day and has not left since, you are at the very start of a timeline, and the first days are the ones you can record most accurately.
Keep a record of the start and of each day after it, and take your questions to a clinician. Diagnosis stays with your clinician.
What makes a headache new and daily
Wikipedia describes new daily persistent headache as a headache that is daily and unremitting from very soon after onset, within 3 days at most, usually in a person with no history of a primary headache disorder.
Timing is the distinctive part, so the start is what to write down.
Date the first day
Write down the day the headache began and what you were doing. If you cannot name the day, note the week and say so. A clinician will want the beginning pinned as closely as you can manage, and a general overview of headache types can help you find words for what you feel.
Keep a daily line
Each day, write one line: where the pain sits, how strong it is on a scale of 0 to 10, and anything that seemed to change it. A month of lines shows whether the headache is steady or shifting, which is hard to judge from memory.
The change that signals the next stage
Raise these with a clinician in Clifton or wherever you are seen, without trying to guess what they mean:
- A new kind of pain that differs from the daily headache
- Weakness, numbness, or changes in vision or speech
- Headache that now arrives with fever or a stiff neck
- A clear break in the pattern, such as days with no headache at all
A broad pain management resource can offer background reading while you wait for an appointment, though it cannot place your headache on any timeline.
What to bring
Bring the first-day note and the daily lines. They show a clinician the whole sequence at a glance.
One question to take to your appointment
Ask this: given how my headache started and how it has run since, what would you want to track next, and what would make you change the plan? Some people also look at what a pain medicine professional body publishes before they ask.