I have. The freakiest part is that I sometimes get a huge blind spot to go with it. I cannot see things sometimes as large as a person on one half of my field of vision. Thank goodness the vision gets better when the vomitting kicks in or I might miss the target.
I have had o.m.'s 2-3 x a year for about 10 years, but, thankfully, not the headaches!
I had an experience that was very similar to Indygrrl’s, except I was at work. I got the aura, which meant I couldn’t read the data I was trying to process. I called my mother, and she said it meant I was probably about to get a migraine. In the interest of being proactive, I went to my boss and begged off sick then got on the bus to go home (half an hour to get to the city, then about forty minutes to get home from there). About halfway through the first bus ride, I started feeling headachy and motion sick. I get off the bus in the city, and out the front of Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building (one of the swankiest shopping malls in the city) I vomit on a bus shelter about three times. Go to the loo, wash up, get on another bus and go straight to the doc. He had to give me an anti-emetic shot and a painkiller shot because I was just vomiting every time I tried to even think about swallowing anything. I went home and slept for 2 days. That was the scariest headache I’ve had in my life, and it came from nowhere.
I get these somewhat frequently and it’s rarely followed by a headache that is anything worse than normal. Usually, when I start to see the blind spot and then the flashing lights, I immediately pop a couple of ibuprofen to combat the possible headache that could follow. Usually it’s about a half hour cycle and then I’m back to normal. I’m a 27, almost 28, year old male and have had them for probably 10-11 years or so.
I’m glad to know that I am not the only one who gets these. I seem to get them about once every couple of weeks. I’ve had them ever since childhood. They usually last about 10 to 15 minutes. If I am home I can go into a dark room and let it go away. Unfortunately I don’t always have this option, especially if I am driving or am at work. The most I can do is squint and reduce the amount of light entering my eyes. Sometimes they are bad enough that I can’t look at a computer monitor.
I never thought that they had anything to do with migraines since, fortunately, I do not suffer from migraine headaches. The worst they do is disrupt my vision. I tend to feel lethargic when they occur, but I don’t know if this is a cause or effect of the symptom.
What I’d like to know is what brings them on and how to avoid them if I can. I suspect that lack of sleep might be one, but I tend to get them when I’ve had too much caffeine.
I get these regularly. I’ve had migraines since childhood, and until my mid-20’s I never had an aura. Since that time, they’ve usually been preceded by an aura much like the one you experienced.
Mine also start with a small, shimmery crescent, but it’s usually slightly below and to the right of the center of vision. The crescent grows, and I can see zigzags and crosshatches in the crescent. The area also changes color in a way that’s hard to describe - if you’ve ever seen a dichroic glass mobile or mirror (such as these mobiles here ) you’ll understand what it looks like. Eventually the crescent grows to fill most of the right side of my visual field, although a week ago I had one that obliterated my entire visual field for several minutes. The whole thing evaporates within a half hour. If I’m going to get a headache with it (and I don’t always), the pain sets in after the aura goes away.
I imagine this would be really scary if you have no history of migraine. Since I was already getting the characteristic headaches before the interesting visuals started, I wasn’t quite so unnerved.
I get auras, but they affect my speech, thought patterns, and motor control more than my vision. I can’t concentrate at all (it’s like I’m trying to chase down my thoughts and failing miserably), my speech gets very slurred and it’s tough for me to articulate what I want to say. I get clumsy and noises around me seem very loud and annoying, even things that weren’t bothersome a short time before. Then after about 30-45 minutes, the headache sets in, and the next day I’m just exhausted.
Oh, and dwc1970, things like lack of sleep and caffeine definitely affect whether you get migraines (or in your case, auras). One of the things my neurologist warned me about was drinking too much caffeine. So it may very well be that those are two of the biggest triggers for you.
That’s exactly what my migraines are like. The shimmery crescent goes from a little blotch at the center of my vision to a diffuse aura that disipates up off the upper right-hand side. This takes about twenty minutes or half an hour, and when the shimmering goes away, the headache sets in (which gives me plenty of time to take some pills). I have these on average 3 to 5 times a year.
For years, I thought that this was some form of eye-strain, until my doctor told me “No, that’s a classic migraine.” It surprised me, since the headaches I get after the aura aren’t very bad (a couple of ibuprophen will take care of them). The other people I know who have migraines seem to have awful, even debilitating pain from them.
This site has a picture of exactly what I saw when I had my one and only ocular migraine last year. It scared the hell out of me at the time.
I never got a headache or any other symptoms.
Heavens! Another Eleanor on the bb! Welcome (and I almost used her name–it was a toss up-good thing I didn’t).
I had OM once–and I completley freaked out. I had had a few migraines before (about twice a year) but had never had any visual disturbances.
Since two of my sisters suffered from diabetic retinopathy–I thought I was losing my vision for all time. I am sure that my panic over that only made the ensuing headache that much worse.
Mine did not quite resemble the ones linked–I am no artist, but I thought I had better draw what I was seeing in case a doc ever needed to see it. I still have the drawing–mine was less of a crescent and more of a wave that seethed and twisted, like a crystal in the sun. It was much worse in one eye, the other eye had a small crystal facet in the middle of my visual field.
makes you really think bout the “visions” all those saints had, doesn’t it?
I had a couple of these about a year ago. The first time, I was getting ready for work and was really freaked out by it. I was ready to call my eye doctor when I found something on the Internet about auras. Sure enough, it went away in about half an hour. I got another one a few weeks later, but haven’t had one since. Neither of mine was accompanied by a headache, thank goodness. I used to get migraines all the time, but haven’t had a “real” one for probably two years.
I see shimmers in the air sometimes, but it doesn’t come with a headache–something mor to do with pressure on my eyelids, I think. Weird stuff. :dubious:
I get classic textbook-type migraines, and sometimes the blindspots, but have never had the auras.
Good lord, I had one recently and I didn’t know what it was. We had just been hiking on a trail that turned unexpectedly very steep, and it was hard for me, a chubby middle-aged woman, to negotiate it. While we were driving home, I experienced exactly what this thread is describing - a silvery blind spot that started in the middle and eventually moved to the left side, and which completely obscured my left-hand peripheral vision for a quarter of an hour or so. I attributed it to over-exertion and had forgotten about it until reading this. No headache, though. Interesting.
Thankfully over the last 20 years the frequency with which I get migraines has been reduced. However I still get the aura, it just isn’t always followed by a full blown migraine.
I’ve had precisely one, way back in seventh grade. I was sitting there, taking a test, when all of a sudden I noticed a large, swimmy blind spot. Needless to say, I was a bit concerned. I made my way to the nurse’s office, with the spot gradually getting so large that I had trouble seeing ANYTHING. I thought I was going blind. When I described it to her, she said, “You’d better lie down- you’re about to get a really bad headache.”
Sure enough, not three minutes later, I got the worst headache I’ve ever had. It lasted about six years or so (or an hour, I can’t really remember), and then I was just groggy for the rest of the day.
I’m really glad that was the only one I’ve ever had.
I had something like that precede a migraine once, but at the time it seemed more like the grey static “snow” on a TV instead of a zig-zag. I lost peripheral vision on my left side for about 15 minutes - pretty scary, I thought I was going blind. =/
When I was younger I suffered from occasional migranes, sometimes with auras and numbness, sometimes without. More recently I occasionally have the Ocular Migranes but with no headache. I also take a dose of ibuprophen and this seems to shorten duration. Lack of sleep, stress, or too much booze seem to be my triggers.
Migraines can be brought on by over-exertion (especially in the heat), but I don’t know about the auras. Tricky little bastards, migraines.
What makes your auras go away? Just time and rest, or is there something specific you do, or something you take? I spent years working on finding the right way to deal with my migraines, so I’m always curious to know how others deal with them, and related problems.
Like others in this thread, the first time I got one I thought I was going blind. I did ask my regular doctor (and a friend who’s a doctor) about it, but my description didn’t quite match the textbook, so neither of them recognized it. This was pre-Internet, and I didn’t find out what it was until I ran across an old Scientific American article about migraines. This made sense, because a couple of family members get the headaches, although I never have. (But I am sensitive to nitrites; and too much bacon, for example, will give me a non-aura headache that lasts for days.)
The first one occurred when I was under a lot of pressure at work, and they seem come on more frequently under those conditions, but most of the time there’s no connection I can see.