My Experience with the Migraine Buddy App

I initially downloaded the Migraine Buddy app to have a consolidated, easy way to share my migraine journaling with my healthcare providers.

My migraine notes were scattered or lost and trying to record in the midst of a migraine is essentially impossible.

Over the course of a few months, I've found the app quite helpful.

There are many ways to customize it and even when photophobic, I can usually click "record an attack" and fill in the details later.

Personally, the app has made me much more aware of my triggers. Throughout the day as I make entries into the daily tracker, I can see the potential for migraine looming in a more cognizant way than before. I've become more likely to say "Wait, I've already encountered three triggers today, I really should pass on meeting friends at the restaurant tonight."

I've also grown more aware of my own prodrome phase as I began to track symptoms before sensory overload and pain hit.

In paying better attention to my own patterns, I've been able to prevent some migraines from overwhelming me, either by changing activities or turning to medication sooner.

I still have sudden, bulldozer, hijacking migraines. Without becoming a hermit, these will likely continue.

The app though keeps me from "pushing through" or ignoring early migraine warning signs. It has brought to my awareness prodrome and aura symptoms I was experiencing, but had failed to connect to subsequent migraine head pain, sensitivities, gi distress, and cognitive impairment. The condition is so complex!

It's almost become a game, in that I want to see my migraine average pain and length go down. It might be silly, but seeing my statistics motivates me to take better care of myself.

The data analysis has been insightful. I now realize just how much I was minimizing my own condition! The awareness and acknowledgement has been empowering.

Overall the app has generally reinforced what I already knew, what my triggers are, what therapies are most helpful, etc. But the ease of recording and the analysis have been helpful in making me more aware of the earliest stages of a migraine (when possible) and thus empower me to take steps to treat the migraine before it becomes to disabling to care for myself.

I'm still months away from being able to see the neurologist, so whether the app will help is that communication is yet to be determined, but I would recommend it for anyone still learning about their own headache condition (it offers cluster and tension headache tracking also) or wanting to keep records.

A feature to time stamp symptoms or triggers as they are clicked rather than a separate notes page would be nice, but overall I find it a useful tool.

What about you? Do you keep migraine records? If so in what form and for what purpose? Has it been helpful?