This one is fairly true to life for me (although the video shows the effect develop over a shorter time than reality:
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One thing I’d add is that, for me at least, you don’t actually see the gap per se. There’s just a part where you can’t see. I’ll see a bit of the colors, but the blank part is more like not there.
Have you ever done that experiment where you find the blind spot in your eye, and how your brain will fill in the gap? It’s kinda like that, but bigger, and taking a whole half of my vision.
I also get a lot of numbness and a lightheadedness. Sometimes it comes with a distinct lack of anxiety. Other times it goes the other way. Not a natural feeling anxiety, either–nothing like a panic.
For me, if I can get to sleep after I notice the aura, I can basically sleep off the actual headache. I will wake up with a postdrome headache instead. If I can’t, though, then sleep becomes impossible due to the pain.
About twice a year I get the effect similar to looking into a bright light in the center of my vision, with a bright white spot that makes it hard to read but that’s about it. Just last month I asked my ophthalmologist about it and as others have reported, she called it an aura migraine. Essentially she said “enjoy the light show” - without any headaches or other side effects. It lasts only ten minutes or so, and seems to come about when I’m dehydrated.
I get 'em, just the aura part with a slight headache following and a real funky/foggy feeling that lasts a few hours. First time it happened I thought it was a stroke. Mine are almost always in the morning and once I recognized the ziggy aura in a dream just before waking up. I also think I get them during the night, sometimes I wake up with the same post aura funk.
I take Prilosec and was looking into side effects. B12 deficiency was mentioned, so I started taking B12 supplements. And my migraine episodes dropped of from a few a month to a couple a year, and with much lower severity. Then I read that B12 might help migraines, but I can’t say for certain that any of the above has any root in reality, just my experience.
I had one of those last year and it scared the crap out of me because I had no idea what it was. I just suddenly started getting these weird squiggly light patterns in my peripheral vision, and then (this was the scary part) I couldn’t read right. I’d stare at a page but the words didn’t make sense. I panicked and called the spouse and made him take me to the eye doctor, who assured me I was fine, that was probably what it was, and I shouldn’t worry too much about it.
It repeated once more in a much milder fashion a couple months later (squiggly lines, but no reading problems) and not again since. No pain either time.
I used to get ‘normal’ migraines which could knock me sideways for a couple of days. After my boys were born, they just stopped happening (yay!) but returned as ocular migraines when I was in my 50s.
The first one happened when I was out and about with no sunglasses and no analgesia, so I was really nervous. Until the pain failed to declare itself. Weird.
The only time I’ve had an “aura” is during a seizure (a focal). The best way to describe it is how you get all those weird colored patterns when you rub your eyes? It’s usually this frog green, sort of blury kaleidoscope thing.
I’ve gotten it once or twice during a migraine. Scary as fuck. Most of the time, it’s an auditory aura.
There has been talk about how a migraine is really a “mini-seizure,” caused by a cortical spreading depression–effectively different parts of the brain reducing or shutting down in succession, but not all at once.
So it makes sense to me why there might be overlap in symptoms there. And yes, why the aura is scary as fuck if it might be something worse.
BTW, how does the auditory aura work? You lose some ability to hear? You hear weird sounds you know aren’t there? Some pitches seems to be muffled but others are perfectly clear?
Also, do you get the emotional changes? Because I do.
Cortical spreading depression is the current theory, but I think mini-seizure mis-characterizes it. Essentially, brain function is depressed and the range of side effects from that is extremely wide and variable - everything from auras to aphasia.
Had one this morning during a dream just before waking, it was maybe 50% through its progression when I woke up. I hopped up and took two Advil, I don’t really feel bad at all now.
I still can’t quite wrap my head around seeing the things in my dreams, and it wasn’t part of the dream (dream involved changing the oil in something - maybe a lawnmower), but I’m aware of it happening before I wake up.
I get them. The last one I got was in June, when I got the light show, but instead of the liquid agony sloshing in my skull, the muscles in my neck and upper back seized up and I couldn’t move them without a lot of pain and nausea.
When I get the aura, I go for Robin’s Magic Cocktail: 100 mg of Imitrex and 800 mg of ibuprofen washed down with caffeinated soda, preferably sugar-sweetened, but diet will do in a pinch. This will either kill the migraine or dampen it so I can at least function.
I get them too. Used to get normal migraines. Now I get the aura for 20-30 minutes, sometimes followed by nausea and an odd headache. Followed by hours of feeling just plain weirdly disconnected.
Aura for a few minutes to an hour. NOT followed by a headache. Not much pain, but for a half day, I feel spacey, like someone dropped me off a building.