so about three months ago i started logging every prodrome phase, not just counting full migraine days. nothing fancy - just date, time, what i noticed. most of it’s baseline fatigue or maybe some jaw tension that goes nowhere. but the aura days? those got interesting. i noticed the visual stuff happens way earlier than i thought. imo like i’ll see the shimmering, that weird sparkly thing at the edge of my vision, maybe once a week, sometimes twice. takes about 15-20 minutes most times, occasionally longer if it’s a bad one. but here’s the thing: i showed my actual pattern to my neuro, and suddenly she cared about aura timing in a way she didn’t when i was just saying “yeah i get flashing lights sometimes.” she asked if it changed or if i was just noticing more. honestly, probably noticing more. but also, my aura window seems way shorter than what the textbooks describe. the triptan works best if i catch it in that narrow 10-15 minute window, not the 30 minutes she said. does anyone else’s aura timing feel completely off from what you read about? ymmv.
so the part about your neuro who “suddenly cared” is the whole reason for logging. That’s the signal, not the noise.
Where I’d push back is on the framing that your timing is “off from what you read about.” A textbook describes a population average, not a rule every patient has to follow. Your n=1 data isn’t supposed to match the textbook, it’s supposed to isolate your specific therapeutic window.
That 10-15 minute window for the triptan isn’t an anomaly that proves the book wrong; it’s the actionable clinical data point you were looking for. You just needed the log to prove it.
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