As a doctor, I hear headache patients say, “I’ve had headaches for more than 10 years, but I don’t know what’s wrong.” I don’t know what to say. But as I listen to patients describe their headaches, I can’t help but feel that patients really need to know how to describe their headaches to their doctors. There are only two possibilities for a patient with a chronic headache that is not effectively treated: one is that the doctor does not understand the patient’s description of the headache (which of course does not exclude the doctor’s own lack of patience and experience); the other is that the patient does not accurately describe the nature and course of his or her headache, which prevents the doctor from correctly judging the disease, resulting in the headache not being accurately and timely diagnosed and treated. Headache is a subjective experience of the patient, and the doctor can only look for clues from the patient’s description of the disease. The correct diagnosis is achieved by taking medical history, examining the body, and laboratory tests (such as some necessary laboratory tests and CT and MRI examinations). If the doctor is a computer, then the medical history provided by the patient is like the data input to the computer, you provide 1+1, then the computer will inevitably come to the conclusion of 2. Therefore, it is very important to describe your headache accurately to the doctor. Since there is a queue at the outpatient clinic of a large hospital, it is impossible for the doctor to give you too much time, so it is necessary to do your homework before seeing the doctor to describe your illness in detail and accurately in just a few minutes. How to do your homework? I would like to make a few suggestions for your reference: 1. Tell the doctor how long you have had the headache; 2. Is it paroxysmal or persistent? 3.The nature of the headache: such as throbbing pain, swelling pain, clenching pain, cutting pain; 4.The location of the headache: such as forehead pain, lateral pain, posterior occipital pain, etc.; 5.With or without nausea, vomiting, cold and fever, diarrhea and other accompanying symptoms during the headache; 6.Do you have a family history of headache? 7.How about sleep? Do you have any history of mental tension, stressful work, etc.? In addition, don’t forget to bring your medical history book, take your various examination reports, head CT and head MRI films, and remember the medications you have taken and your experience with them before you see the doctor. Among the above suggestions, it is especially important to describe the nature of the headache accurately. We wish our patients to be free from headaches soon.