I get optical migraines fairly regularly. Maybe a couple times a month. Have been since I was about 50.
Starts out as a shimmering small jagged line in the center of my vision. Slowly extends out to the peripherals of my vision in a circular pattern. Then disappears out of sight. Whole thing lasts about 20 minutes and can be annoying (but kind of pretty to watch). No pain to it at all.
The first time it happened (20 years ago), it scared me to death. Thought I was going blind. Asked my regular doctor what it was and he said he had no idea. Went to see an optometrist a couple years later and he knew exactly what it was. Told me it can be caused by stress or lack of sleep or something I ate or going too long between meals.
Which is pretty much the case for me.
The only real bad thing about it is for the first few minutes, when it is right in the center of my vision, I really can’t see all that well. A problem if it happens while I’m driving.
I used to get the trifecta, (aura then debilitating headache with nausea) about ten years ago. It was always on the first day of my period. Medicine didn’t help much. It was also a stressful time in my life, so I wonder if that’s related.
Going to a chiropractor is the only thing that helped. I might get a remnant of a migraine every now and then, but the debilitating symptoms stopped.
Recently, I’ve had the auras without headache. I had two auras in two days a couple months ago. Thankfully no headaches, but I get a bit of nausea and the lethargy. No one else in my immediately family has any of this. Lucky me!
All of my teen years and a goodly portion of my adult years up until my late 30s, I used to have frequent, killer, debililating migraines. When I finally hit early menopause - they vanished. Never had these auras as everyone’s described.
To date, and I’m now in my mid-50s, I’ve experienced exactly one migraine aura.
Freaked Me Out. :eek:
Had no idea what it was and called the optometrist in a panic, convinced I was about to die of an aneurisym or something. He knew exactly what it was, told me to relax and that it would be gone in a half hour, and that’s exactly what happened.
I’d had two to five of those for three or four years but haven’t had any in the last 18 months. I’ve never had any pain or other symptoms with them. I’d always assumed everyone saw different shapes and patterns so it’s fascinating to me that’s not the case. Mine would start out with a sensation that a flash bulb had just gone off in front of me, though the my vision would still be normal. Then the aura would faintly start and sometimes grow so bright that it was hard to see past it. Fortunately, they would only last twenty minutes or so.
The last one I had was just after I’d fainted. (I’d been a pint low at the time after giving blood.) I awoke to a paramedic who, among other things, asked me if I was having any other symtoms. I mentioned that my eyesight was a little off before I realized it was just an ocular migraine setting in. He said he got those too. It’s funny I haven’t had one since. I was caught before I hit the floor so I didn’t hit my head but I wonder if whatever caused the migraines got fixed somehow when I fainted. The low blood pressure in the brain or something, maybe. Weird, anyway.
I call them fortification patterns. The first one happened when I was waiting on a subway platform on my way to HS, I was probably 15. It frightened me, but it went away in about 20 minutes with no sequel, except a slight disorientation in the visual field, but even that dissipated quickly. No headache. Although I used to get fairly regular, relatively moderate headaches, not migraines. For a long time, every Monday morning.
But the migraine pattern attacks continued, happening several times a year, maybe as often as once a month. Utterly at random. Then I started taking beta blockers until my heart rate started dropping (into the low 30s) and I was weaned off of them and got a pacemaker. During the 40+ years I took the beta blockers, the attacks ceased, no surprise since beta blockers are known to inhibit them. Since then I get them once or twice a year. They interfere for a short time with reading. The first time I got one while driving, I pulled over until it went away, but since then I’ve learned to live with them. Fortunately, they have never been accompanied by either a headache or nausea.
I also get optical migraines, almost always when I’m under a lot of stress. However, bacon or anything with nitrites will give me a headache that lasts a day or two. My mother and older brother both got actual migraines.
I suffered from pain-only migraines throughout my teens and into my mid-twenties. Then one day about two years ago, I had to tell my coworkers I was taking an early lunch, because I couldn’t see! I spoke to an optometrist friend, who told me what was going on, but it was the freakiest thing I’d ever experienced!
Since then, I no longer experience pain-only migraines, and I don’t get pain alongside the aura, but I do get the aura once every few months or so. It starts out as just blurry vision, and gradually grows into something very similar to the picture in the OP. They typically last 20-30 minutes before fading away, and I’m left feeling very lethargic and loopy. I often develop a regular, run of the mill headache as well, probably from squinting trying to see before I register what’s happening.