Factoid of the Day...

wayne3burk

Visual Migraine--

A couple of years ago (when i still had a job) I was sitting at my desk at work looking at my computer monitor, when suddenly i couldn't read the text on my screen. Whenever i looked at the words, they would shimmer out of focus. When i looked anywhere else in the room i saw flashing shimmering artifacting throughout my peripheral vision - especially on the left side.

So anyways, I called my wife who is a nurse and described it to her, and she made me an appointment with the ophthalmologist for the next day.

He checked it out - no retinal tears - and when i explained the symptoms to him, which only lasted an hour or so, he explained to me that i was having a visual migraine.

from wikipedia

Aura phase
For the 20–30%[14][15] of migraine sufferers who experience migraine with aura, this aura comprises focal neurological phenomena that precede or accompany the attack. They appear gradually over 5 to 20 minutes and generally last fewer than 60 minutes. The headache phase of the migraine attack usually begins within 60 minutes of the end of the aura phase, but it is sometimes delayed up to several hours, and it can be missing entirely. Symptoms of migraine aura can be visual, sensory, or motor in nature.[16]
Visual aura is the most common of the neurological events. There is a disturbance of vision consisting usually of unformed flashes of white and/or black or rarely of multicolored lights (photopsia) or formations of dazzling zigzag lines (scintillating scotoma; often arranged like the battlements of a castle, hence the alternative terms "fortification spectra" or "teichopsia"[17]). Some patients complain of blurred or shimmering or cloudy vision, as though they were looking through thick or smoked glass, or, in some cases, tunnel vision and hemianopsia. The somatosensory aura of migraine consists of digitolingual or cheiro-oral paresthesias, a feeling of pins-and-needles experienced in the hand and arm as well as in the nose-mouth area on the same side. Paresthesia migrate up the arm and then extend to involve the face, lips and tongue.
Other symptoms of the aura phase can include auditory or olfactory hallucinations, temporary dysphasia, vertigo, tingling or numbness of the face and extremities, and hypersensitivity to touch.
Oliver Sacks's book Migraine describes "migrainous deliria" as a result of such intense migraine aura that it is indistinguishable from "free-wheeling states of hallucinosis, illusion, or dreaming."

Thank god i don't get the real deal though - I've never had the pain phase of a migraine, but since then I've had the Aura phase on numerous occasions.

-- wayne --

hearingimpared

The pain phase of a migraine has no description except for excruciating! Glad to hear your's isn't as serious.

wayne3burk

yeah - my 27 yr old daughter has suffered from the real thing since the age of 19 or 20.

Her record was a 5 day one that hospitalized her when she was 20.

She's tried all the meds and has learned to "manage" them.

-- wayne --

hearingimpared

wayne3burk wrote: »

yeah - my 27 yr old daughter has suffered from the real thing since the age of 19 or 20.

Her record was a 5 day one that hospitalized her when she was 20.

She's tried all the meds and has learned to "manage" them.

-- wayne --

Mine lasted two months 24 x 7. It was caused my a diabetes medication I was taking which has been changed out. Mine was worse than a regular migraine though. It was acute in two spots on the left side of my head, then traveled down the left side of my forhead, closed my left eye and wrapped around my left jawbone. In the meantime it traveled down the rear of the left side of my head down into my neck and wrapped itself around the left base of my skull.

Brutal.

Ask your daughter if she ever tried a medication called 'Migranol.' It is a nasel spray, one shot up each nostril and within a minute the excrutiation parts goes away and after about 5 minutes it brings the migrain from a 10 to a manageable 5. Believe it or not this stuff has been around since 1949.

punk-roc

Many people have relayed to me that taking a decent-sized dose of ibuprofen (600-800mg, probably going to want to take with a snack of some kind too) immediately at the onset of a migraine helps lessen the overall blow as well..

Jason

PerfectCreature

There is nothing to loosen the blow of a migraine. C affine helps but not a lot.
I had them when I was around 12 years of age, and they lasted until I was 18. It basically almost failed me out of school. I was in and out of the hospital, they were so bad they gave Hydrocodone, and really beefed up Tylenol. I'd get them days at a time, and when you had them, your world was upside down. Death was pretty much a welcomed solution. After you got done a migraine, you felt like a million dollar's, and you thought you just survived a nuclear fallout.
Basically for me sunlight and sound were my worst enemy. I soundproofed my room to try to cut out noise when I had them, and I bought the darkest colour painting I could find, along with noise, and light blocking curtains.
I never did have the vision blurs like you did, at least that I can remember, I have forgotten most of them just because the pain is so bad, I have only had one since I was 18 and had to get hospitalized because I thought my head was going to explode. I generally have a headache all the time, but when you spend 6 years suffering with a migraine all headaches are like a **** with a needle.
Take it from one who knows. They are the one of the worst things you could ever endure, at least the more potent ones anyway. It is not something I would wish on anyone no matter how much I hated them.
As for the ibuprofen comment, that does help alot, sometimes you can knock it out before it hits, but most times not. It also depends on how sensitive you eyes are and you hearing as well. I know that I have light blue eyes so the sun usually made them worse.
Yeah, they suck.

apc

Wow. I used to have terrible migraine's as a kid. Seemed to outgrow them in later years, although still crippled by them occasionally.

The reference to the aura phase above is right on the money. I've experienced that exact phenomenon a few times in the last couple of years - get this - without the headache. Bizarre at best.

Thanks for the info!

Poee7R

Once when I was 21-22 or so, I got hit with a migraine that caused my vision to dim and the world to spin in the most awful pain. I was given an Imitrex, and within 10 minutes or so it was gone. Absolutely gone. I felt like that pill saved my life.

That was the one and only time Ive had a real migrane. I feel for folks who have to deal with that on a somewhat regular basis. I dont know how I would do it.


Dave

ryanjoachim

Everyone is different in what works and what doesn't work to control or soften a migraine. My wife has had them for years, but they're usually brought on by being around people smoking a lot.

She gets the blurry vision, but she also gets temporary paralysis in her arm and parts of her face.

PerfectCreature

i just had unbearable pain that completely knocked me senseless. I turned into a vegetable, I couldn't move, or talk. Really anyone around me caused pain. My senses grew ten fold and tiny everyday sounds that are just as light as feather feel as if they are 100db and right in your ear. any light blinded me, and i had the worst upset stomach

Huck344

I get the Aura phase about once a week or so. . . but it only escalates to a full migraine about once a month. Still the aura phase is freaking. You can't focus on anything and it's almost like everything is flashing. I got it on the golf course a couple of weeks ago. Freaked me out. I eventually made it through, but was totally discombobulated for around 30-45 minutes. My buddies and I were betting on each hole, so I didn't want to say anything for fear of looking like I was afraid of loosing more money.

seeclear

apc wrote: »

The reference to the aura phase above is right on the money. I've experienced that exact phenomenon a few times in the last couple of years - get this - without the headache. Bizarre at best.

Actually it is not bizarre at all. Migraine encompasses a wide variety of symptoms, most of which are enumerated in other posts here, and headache is just one symptom of the many. You say migraine and people automatically think headache, but migraines without a headache is not uncommon at all. I see folks in my office all the time for migraine aura that they don't associate with "migraine" because they didn't get the headache. I also get migraine aura with no other symptoms at all, knock on wood. I don't want the headache described by others, here, thank you very much. My sister gets common migraines, just the headache/photophobia/nausea without a visual aura. The good thing is that they are benign, meaning that they aren't caused by brain damage, or tumors, etc, and don't CAUSE brain damage, or anything, although you might think when you have such a severe headache that something must be damaged by it. I don't mean benign in the sense that they aren't bad, because as others have written here, the pain can be excrutiating, but you don't have to worry about other causes or damage being caused by migraine.

unc2701

Yeah, the aura thing is some wild ****. For mine, parts of my vision get scrambled. Whatever I'm directly looking at is fine, but outside of that, it's like having my visual field printed on a puzzle and a pieces moved around.

Huck344

unc2701 wrote: »

Yeah, the aura thing is some wild ****. For mine, parts of my vision get scrambled. Whatever I'm directly looking at is fine, but outside of that, it's like having my visual field printed on a puzzle and a pieces moved around.

+1000000000000000

That's exactly what happens to me. It is such a trip.

mdaudioguy

Hey Wayne, I was about to post my experience with the same thing. I went to an ophthalmologist and he checked out my eyes and found nothing wrong. I described my symptoms and he called it an opthalmic migraine. It's happened to me twice and both times were on the basketball court. He said dehydration plays a big part in it. Scary experience, but no pain at all. Anyhow, before I could post my reply, I coincidentally stumbled upon this article from yesterday!
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Scary-sight-Cubs-Jeff-Baker-loses-vision-can-?urn=mlb,244240

:eek:

CTTE

I get these.

Here's a video that's pretty close to what I see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV_37cao38U

It takes longer for the "C" to grow, and the area within the "C" is scrambled, out of focus. It usually takes about an hour for it to go away.

mdaudioguy

CTTE wrote: »

I get these.

Here's a video that's pretty close to what I see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV_37cao38U

It takes longer for the "C" to grow, and the area within the "C" is scrambled, out of focus. It usually takes about an hour for it to go away.

Thanks! That's about the best depiction of it that I've ever seen! Beats trying to describe it to someone... Mine were more like spirals that slowly enlarged, rather than a static C shape, but the video basically nailed it.;)