myth i believed for years: the exhaustion before a migraine is just me being tired, unrelated, coincidence. reality is fatigue is a documented prodrome symptom, same category as yawning and neck stiffness and food cravings, not some side effect that happens to overlap. here’s what made me actually believe it. i started logging energy level on a 1-5 scale three times a day, separate from headache pain.
over about 10 weeks, a 2 or lower at my midday check-in predicted an attack within 24 hrs roughly 60% of the time. that’s not nothing. that’s a warning sign i was calling “just a rough day” for probably two years. the part that still messes with me: topiramate fog and prodrome fatigue feel almost identical to me.
slow word-finding, heavy limbs, wanting to lie down. i can’t always tell which one i’m in until the headache shows up or doesn’t. my neuro’s answer was basically “track it and see,” which is not satisfying but is honest. so now when i hit that specific tired, not sleepy-tired, more like wading-through-mud tired, i treat it like an aura and get ahead of it instead of pushing through a lesson plan.
anyone else track energy separately from pain and actually get a signal out of it, or is this just my n=1?