Cluster headache is timed like a clock and cruel like one. During a bout, people often remember “it was every night” and forget which nights, which hour, and whether oxygen or a triptan was even available.
A cluster headache log is a timing instrument. It is not a personality journal and it is not a treatment protocol.
The fields that matter in a bout
- Clock time it started (not just “night”)
- How long until it eased
- Side — clusters are usually one-sided; note if that ever flips
- Restlessness or the opposite, if you can
- Autonomic details only if you can spare the tap: tearing, redness, congestion
- What you used, at what minute: oxygen, injectable, nasal, oral, nothing
- Whether you were already asleep
Intensity still helps (1–10), but duration and clock hour are the columns specialists scan first.
Do not wait for the bout to end
Logging after a six-week cycle from memory produces a myth. One tap at onset, even if you cannot finish the form, preserves the clock. Finish the rest when you can sit down.
If attacks come in sleep, put the phone on the nightstand and accept messy entries. A messy timestamp beats a blank week.
Separating cluster from migraine in the same diary
Some people have both. Use the type chip. Do not merge them into “headache” if you already know they feel different. The PDF then shows two histograms instead of one muddy average.
If you are not sure of the type, log “other” and describe the attack in one line. Guessing “cluster” because the internet said so is worse than an honest unlabeled row.
What to bring to clinic
- Date the bout started and, if it ended, the date it ended
- Typical clock hour
- Count of attacks in the last 7 and 30 days
- List of acute treatments you actually had access to
- Anything that changed: new job shift, altitude, alcohol on a specific night
Leave out theories about “the weather always” unless you also have the pressure numbers attached to those nights.
Oxygen and other treatments belong as facts
Write what you used and when. Do not write whether it “should have worked.” Efficacy is a conversation with a clinician, not a checkbox an app can grade.
Auralis will not tell you to start oxygen or a preventive. It will list the medication names you typed.
Between bouts
Keep the app. A remission period with zero attacks is data. The next bout is easier to date if the last empty month is visible.
If you only open a tracker in crisis, you will lose the edges of the cycle — the part that often matters for planning work and travel.
Language that does not help
Avoid “suicide headache” as a diary label if you can; clinicians already know the severity, and the phrase can make a shared PDF harder to hand to a family member. “Cluster, 10, 47 minutes, left, 3 a.m.” is enough.
This article is informational. Cluster headache needs a clinician. A log is something you bring them, not something that replaces them.