ONSET

Determine:

• At what point in time did the patient begin experiencing the symptom(s)?
  
  
• If symptom(s) was/were recurrent over a span of weeks, months, or years, when was the very first time they were noticed? When did they begin this time?
  

Examples:

• I fell down yesterday afternoon, but my knee didn’t begin bothering me until this morning.
  
  
• I was playing tennis when I realized that my jaw ached, especially on the left side, my left arm and hand felt weak, and I was feeling short of breath. That was an hour ago.
  
  
• I first started having these kind of headaches when I was about 8 years old. This particular headache began this morning.