Introduction

Tips & Suggestions

Quick Start Guide

Detailed Functionality

Introduction

Are you a Migraine Sufferer?

Approximately 28 million Americans experience migraine attacks.  Migraines are painful, throbbing headaches that can last from hours to several days. When you have a migraine, it may be so painful that you are not able to carry on with your normal routine or usual activities. Accompanying nausea may be quite debilitating.  Activity, light, noise, or odors may trigger or even make the migraine worse.  There are as many combinations of different symptoms and different triggers as there are migraine sufferers. 

Some people notice an aura before the migraine begins. When you have an aura, you may first see spots, flashes of lights or wavy lines. Your arms, hands, or face may tingle or feel numb.  In the days before a migraine starts, you may also experience symptoms such as excessive yawning, fatigue, food cravings, irritability, or restlessness.  After the migraine ends, you may experience symptoms such as muscle aches, fatigue, or even elation.

Experts are not sure what causes migraines.  Migraines run in families, but it is not clear why some people get migraines and others do not.

Your Migraine Diary

If you are a migraine sufferer, one of the most helpful tools for you and your doctors is your Migraine Diary.  Most doctors surveyed felt that the best way to improve a consultation would be for a patient to keep a diary of their symptoms.  Keeping a record of migraine attacks in your diary can be a great way of determining the true impact of migraines on your life.  It is useful to keep track of any warning signals, triggers, foods eaten, treatments and their effectiveness.  Even if you don’t see a doctor on a regular basis for your migraines, keeping a log of all the items mentioned above will help you manage your migraines better.  If you do see a doctor, email details from your migraine diary directly to your doctor before your consultation.

If you are just starting to investigate your triggers, you may want to track everything that may be causing your migraines to find a pattern.   You should track information such as the weather, what you've eaten, whether you overslept, any onset warning signals and all of your symptoms.  You should do this on a daily basis for a while.   Once you have enough data, your diary will help you determine your migraine triggers so that you can begin to reduce your migraine frequency and severity.

Tips and Suggestions

Please read the following Tips & Suggestions section. Your diary is very customizable. To unleash its power you should familiarize yourself with its full potential.

Lists

You can add your own "choices" to all lists. When adding events to your diary, several drop-down lists are shown. Add a choice to the list by typing in a new entry at the bottom of the list. You can also do this from the "Manage Choices" option from the main menu or from the "Preferences" option. All choices can be edited and deleted here also.

Look & Feel & Visual Indicators

All symbols that appear on your calendar can be changed. These indicators help you understand your data. They represent an event that occurred on a specific day. You can also change the theme color for your diary. This customization is done from the "Preferences" option from the main menu.

Columns

All columns that appear in your list view can be changed. This customization is done from the "Preferences" option from the main menu.

Backing Up Your Data

You can email yourself a report with all of your data. This will provide you with a backup of all of your data. Emailing is done by pressing the email button on any of the reports that is provided through the "Reports" menu.

Reports

All reports can be emailed. The emailed report is sent in graphical format and in comma-delimited format so that it can be used in another program such as Excel spreadsheet. Emailing is done by pressing the email button on any of the reports that is provided through the "Reports" menu.

Quick Start Guide

This section guides you through a simple Migraine Diary session.   You will navigate through the common functions to create and view your health information.   For help on advanced features go to the Detailed Functionality section.

Recording a Migraine Attack

You have just experienced a migraine, what do you do? 

Your migraine data will be more accurate if you record your migraine attack in your diary as soon as possible.  It is essential to remember any warning signals or possible triggers to gain insight into your migraine.

Step 1

Highlight the date of the migraine attack and press the add (+) button.

Step 2

Enter the migraine data.  If your migraine lasted more than 24 hours, enter data on the next day.

Step 3

Finally, press the “Save” button.  If you do not save before exiting, you will be asked to confirm your action. 

Finding Your Triggers

You have experienced a few migraines and you want to start to try and reduce your pain.  What do you do?  Migraine causes are a mystery.  However you can help control them yourself by recognizing patterns in your life.  The Migraine Diary Reports will help you do this.  The report analysis will not be useful unless you have a few migraine attacks entered and your migraine data is accurate.  Remember that a “Migraine” is considered a “Migraine” only if you do not have “0-No Pain” set in the intensity field.

Step 1

Navigate to the Reports menu and select your reports

Step 2

Select the “Status Summary” report.  This is an integral report in determining your predictors and triggers.  It has everything from most frequent hour of the day to your most frequent food trigger.  It also determines your treatment effectiveness.

Step 3

Select the “Trigger Ratio” report.  This provides you with a graphical view of your trigger ratios so that you can eliminate those triggers from your life.

Step 4

Select the “Food Trigger Ratio” report.  This provides you with a graphical view of your food trigger ratios, so that you can eliminate those foods from your life.

Step 5

Select the “Intensity Profile” report.  This provides you with a linear graphical view of your migraine intensity, so that you can track any possible cycles and pinpoint which days of the month that you need to focus on.

Step 6

Select the “Frequency” reports.  This provides you with a graphical view of the day of week and day of month migraine frequency.  This will enable you to pinpoint the day of week or days of the months that you need to focus on.

Detailed Functionality

Please note that functionality described here varies from system to system.

This section provides details of the Migraine Diary application.   If you have a specific question that is not answered in this section, please utilize the cellHigh Support to ask further questions or send your questions to Support.

The Menu

The Migraine Diary menu is available by pressing the top left arrow by the Migraine Diary program name.  The following table lists the options available through the main menu.

Migraine Diary Menu

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Calendar View  &  List View

When you enter the Diary application, the Calendar View is displayed.  From this view, you can add or edit information for the current day, by highlighting the date from the Calendar View and pressing the add or edit button. To delete a diary entry, highlight the date and press the delete button.  If you want to see more details, select the List View.  You can even change which fields that display in your list view from the Preferences option.

Calendar View

To customize the look & feel of the calendar, select the Preferences option from the menu

List View

To customize the fields that display in this list, select the Preferences option from the menu

  Adding

To add new migraine information for the current day, select the date by highlighting the date from the Calendar View then press this add button. The following “Add” information screen is displayed.  Enter the migraine information and then press “save”.

Start

Enter the start of the migraine attack.  The “Set Date and Time” appears (Figure x) allowing you to set this.

Duration Hours

Enter the duration of the Migraine attack.  The “Set Date and Time” appears (Figure x) allowing you to set this.

Activity

What were you doing when your migraine attack started?

Warning Signs

Select any signals that you observed before your attack.

Symptoms

Select all symptoms you are experiencing during this attack.

Intensity

On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad do you feel compared to other migraines you have had?

Impact

Measure the impact that this migraine had on your life.  Did you have to miss work or school?   If you had to cancel an event, it at least had a moderate impact on your life.

Triggers

Select all triggers that could be the cause of your migraine.  It is essential that you select everything that occurred within 24 hours of the attack.  This will help you identify possible triggering events of your attacks.

Food Triggers

Select all food triggers that could be the cause of your migraine.   It is essential that you select everything that occurred within 24 hours of the attack. 

Treatment

If you decided to take any medication or even if you are on prophylactics, select the treatment that was taken.

Did Treatment Help?

If you took anything to help your migraine, did it help?

Comments

Enter additional remarks regarding this attack.

Overall

Overall how do you feel about this attack?

 Editing

To edit information for the current day, select the date by highlighting the date from the Calendar View or List View and then press this edit button. Pressing this button takes the user to the “Edit” information screen.

Editing

Entering migraine information

Saving

 You will be asked to confirm your action if you discard before saving your changes

Deleting

To delete information for the current day, select the date by highlighting the date from the Calendar View or List View and then press this delete button.  You will be asked to confirm your action before it is deleted.

Deleting

  Select the “Trashcan” button to delete the selected days migraine information

Confirmation

  You will be asked to confirm your action before the entry is deleted

Reports

Reports are available by pressing the reports option from the top left arrow by the Migraine Diary program name.   After you make your report selection, you will enter the desired date range for your report. The following lists the migraine reports available.

The Report Menu

Summary

The “Status Summary” report summarizes your migraine information in one report for the given date range.   It determines your predictors for your migraine attacks.  It calculates the most frequent Hour of Day, Day of Week, and Activity of your migraine attack.  Additionally, the most frequent triggers and food triggers are listed.  If you are trying out different treatments, this analyzes your treatment information and informs you of which tread was most effective.  Since this report identifies your triggers and frequency patterns, it will be most helpful in managing and preventing your migraines.

Frequency

The “Day of Week” and “Day of Month” frequency reports provide you with which days are your problem days.   This will allow you to examine more closely these days to try and find a problem and eliminate it.  You may view this data in either bar graph, pie chart or in a linear chart.

Ratio

The “Trigger”, “Food Trigger”, “Symptom” and “Warning Sign” ration reports provide you with a graphical look at your predictors.  You may view this data in either bar graph, pie chart or in a linear chart.

Profile

The “Intensity” and “Overall” profile provides you with a linear graph of your migraine intensity.  You can see where in the months that your intensity or overall feeling peaks and valleys.

 Preferences

Your Migraine Diary is completely customizable.  You can set preferences for your health diary, such as color theme, which fields to display and visual indicators.  Additionally, password protection, backup and login information is set in this scene.

There are four Preference sections. 

In the “General Settings” drawer you have access to the password protection and date formats.

In the “Application Settings” drawer you can access the “Reset Data” function as well as managing your customizable drop down lists.

In the “Look & Feel” drawer you can access your color theme and what visual indicators or data appears on your calendar and lists.  

General Settings

Password Protection

Tap the “ON” button to enable password protection for your migraine data.  If you enable password protection you will be prompted for the password.  There are no restrictions on password length or content.  Remember this password, as you will be prompted for this password each time you start your Migraine Diary application.  To disable the password protection just press the “OFF” button.

Date Format

Select the correct date format for your region from the drop-down list. 

Application Settings

Manage Choices

The Manage Choices section allows you to add data to and edit your customizable drop-down lists.  All lists that appear in your diary can be added to through this option.  For instance, if you have a particular “Warning Sign” that does not appear in the list, you can add it here.  When you add information to your diary, you can also at that time add new entries to these lists.  These entries can be edited and deleted here also.

Reset All Data

If you want to erase all of your data and start new, you can do this by pressing the “Reset All Data” button.  Since there is no way to reverse this process, you will be asked to confirm if you really want to do this.  NOTE: you can not undo this action, so be careful and make sure that you do not want the data that is currently in your diary.

Manage Choice List

Adding foods to the Food Triggers List.  To Add an item, you tap the ‘+’.  To Change an item, you tap it; To Delete an item, you ‘swipe’ it and the Delete appears (following figure)

Deleting an Item

Deleting a food from the Food Triggers List

Look & Feel

Theme

Customize your diary look by choosing from one of the six color themes.

Display Emoticon

You have the ability to select an emoticon that represents an overall feeling about each entry in your diary.  These emoticons appear on your calendar and list views.  If you don’t want them to display, uncheck the display emoticon checkbox.

Visual Indicators

Visual Indicators help you understand your data.  They represent an event that occurred on a specific day.  These settings allow you to select which event and associate an icon with that event.

Text Indicators

The text that displays on your calendar can be turned on or off here.

List View Fields

The inforamtion that displays on the List View, can be changed from here.

Theme

In the Preferences, Look & Feel drawer, you can customize your look by choosing from six color themes.

Text Indicators

In the Preferences, Look & Feel drawer, you can turn off the display of the text that displays on your calendar.  “Text Indicator 1” displays the Duration of your migraine attack.  “Text Indicator 2” displays the activity that occurrd when your attack began.

Visual Indicators

You can customize 3 visual indicators that display in your diary

Visual Indicators

Visual Indicators help you understand your data.  They represent an event that occurred on a specific day.  These settings allow you to select which event and associate an icon with that event.  You can display up to 3 visual indicators on your diary.

For each visual indicator, you select which icon to display if the condition specified is true.  To specify the event, you must select the field, operator and value of the event.   In the example to the left, the “Pain” icon will display if the “Intensity” field equals any value other than “No Pain”.  This indicates that you have pain on that day, so the “Pain” icon appears.

Visual Indicators:  Icon List

In the Preferences, Look & Feel drawer, you can customize your look by choosing from several visual indicators

Visual Indicators: Field List

In the Preferences, Look & Feel drawer, you can select the field that will trigger the visual icon to display on your calendar