How to keep a symptom diary: what to note and how to prepare it for your doctor

Write briefly and regularly: the date and time, what bothers you, how strong it is on a scale of 0 to 10, what came before it and which medicines you took. A few lines every day are more useful than a long account once a week.

Before the appointment, boil your notes down to half a page: how often the symptom came back, when it was worse, what helped. That makes patterns easier for the doctor to see, and you won't have to remember everything in the room.