Wizard step 2: describing your migraine in your own words

This step looks scary because there is a big empty box. Do not worry. You do not have to fill it. You can skip the whole step if you want.

The screen is called Paint the picture. Under the title it says "Type or speak freely — we'll pre-fill your entire log", and there is a gentle reminder at the bottom: "This is optional — you can skip straight to logging manually".

These steps are the same on iPhone and Android.

What this step is for

This is your chance to tell MigraineMe what happened in plain language, the way you would tell your doctor or your daughter on the phone. MigraineMe can then read what you wrote and try to fill in the next few screens for you. That saves you a lot of tapping.

You do not have to do this. You can skip it and fill everything in by hand on the screens that follow. Both ways work just as well.

What kind of detail helps

If you do want to try it, here are the sorts of things that are useful to mention:

1. Where it hurt: left side, right side, behind one eye, across the forehead, back of the neck.
2. How it felt: pounding, throbbing, pressing, like a band around the head.
3. How bad it was: mild, bothering me, terrible, the worst ever.
4. Other symptoms that came with it: feeling sick, sensitive to light, sensitive to sound, blurred vision.
5. What you took for it: any pill, dose if you remember, whether it helped.
6. What you did to feel better: lay down, dark room, cold cloth, slept.
7. What might have set it off: poor sleep, stress, wine, weather change, missed a meal.

You do not need all of these. One or two is fine. A sentence like "Woke up with a pounding pain behind my right eye, felt sick, took a paracetamol and went back to bed" is plenty.

Typing your description

1. Tap inside the dark box that shows the example text in faint grey.
2. The phone keyboard appears at the bottom.
3. Type whatever you remember. Spelling does not matter.
4. When you are done, tap anywhere outside the keyboard to close it.

If you do not like typing on the phone, the next article shows how to speak it instead using the Voice button.

Letting MigraineMe fill in the next screens

1. Tap the Find matches button below the box (it sits next to the Voice button).
2. The button shows Analysing… for a few seconds.
3. A line appears such as "Found 6 matches — added to your log:", followed by small coloured tags. Each tag is something MigraineMe spotted: a severity, a pain location, a symptom, a medicine, a trigger, a relief.
4. Tags in italics are suggestions: things the app inferred rather than things you said outright. A note below reminds you: "Italic items are suggestions — remove any that don't apply".
5. If a tag is wrong, tap the small cross on that tag to remove it.

The next screens of the wizard will already have these items filled in. You can still change anything there.

If nothing useful is found you will see "No matches found — you can add items manually in the next steps". That is fine too.

Moving on

1. Tap the purple Next button at the bottom right.
2. You will go to step 3, Symptoms.

If you want to skip this step

1. Leave the box empty.
2. Tap Next.

That is perfectly fine. No information is lost. You will just fill in the rest by hand.