Thanks for bringing this up. I get the same damn things, one of my brothers used to get headache-inducing migraines, and another used to get abdominal migraines (just bad nausea about once a month), my mom gets headache-inducing migraines along with abdominal migraines, and my grandmother gets ocular migraines. My visual disturbances are associated with a very mild dizziness, but no weakness in either leg, no pain, and no nausea.
For the record, I’m a man. No gender is spared.
Oh, and mine look like a piece cut out of my visual field and replaced with black static. The pieces are usually round, often half-moon shapes that ‘bracket’ the center of vision on one side or the other.
That’s what mine (one only) was like. I was chatting with Rasa online at the time, and she told me what it was. It lasted about a half-hour, and there were no other symptoms, or any headache. Rasa certainly helped and stopped me from freaking out.
I also got my first (and so far only, knock on wood) ocular migraine during a heinously stressful period at work. I did freak out (a friend of mine had described what his retina detaching looked like) and went down to the nearest optometrist so they could take a peek. By that time, the symptoms were almost gone, but I still took it as an excuse to take the rest of the day off…
Didn’t hurt like a regular migraine (which I get about once a month), but I still hope never to go through that again!
I’ve gotten these from time to time, but didn’t know what it was. Never mentioned to a doctor because I’ve never remembered it while there. I had one last Tuesday, first in some time.
Mine “look” somewhat like what you’d get if dazzled by a flash.
Thanks for the posting, now I need to remember the next time I’m seeing my doctor.
That’s exactly what mine look like when they start. I get a little bright spot of light just off of center, like I looked at the sun or got my picture taken with a flash. Then it slowly gets bigger, and spreads out into an arch, slowly working its way toward the outside periphery of my vision. It takes about 20 minutes total to go away.
I don’t always get standard migraines after having one, which means that the migraine was confined to the retina.
I’ve never had one, but similar to Teela Brown, when my wife had her first one a few years ago, her description of it triggered a memory from the SDMB. A quick google search and my wife’s fears were (somewhat) alleviated. She thought she was about to have a stroke!
I’m another of the “I had one, it went away and I forgot to tell the doctor” contingent. I’ve had 5 or 6 in the meantime and told my eye doctor about one of them. I’ve always thought they were stress-related too, but I haven’t had one in the past year and I’ve been very stressed…
I learned that they were called ocular migraines here and was able to reassure a colleague recently that that’s probably what her son was having. (Eye doctor confirmed this, but they were both panicking.)
Mine are similar to the one in the video, but the spot they start with is completely opaque. As they expand, there’s more of the iridescent component that others have described. They always affect both eyes.
Yep, but with the black static effect that Derleth mentioned. It’s almost always happened after I’ve been to the gym.
I get another thing that might be an ocular migraine, but it only lasts about twenty seconds. Little gold moving specks in the periphery of my vision. I think of them as “the golden bees” and sort of enjoy them. This one has almost always happened in the shower.
I don’t get pain with the ocular migraines, but I do get the classic barfing-and-praying-for-death kind occasionally too.
That’s closer to what mine look like but mine are in the shape of a sort of abstract arc.
Somebody asked if it happens in only one eye. It starts in both eyes, at the same time, in the same spot, I believe usually on the extreme left, moves at the same pace across both eyes. I know it’s done when I have zero peripheral vision to my right. Once or twice it has been followed by a headache.
My bosses both know I get these from time to time and I have explained that when I am having one, I can’t do computer work (can’t see the words on the screen), and that it is very distracting, but I don’t intend to waste 30 minutes of their time while it passes. They understand I won’t be terribly productive but I can usually work through one in some fashion.
I must look comical at times because somehow I think I can trick my eye into seeing something if I turn my head really fast while I’m trying to see something through the blind spot. I’m not sure what “logic” I am using there.
Joy. I’m experiencing one at this moment. I saw a sparkle starting in the lower right quadrant of my vision. Mine always start on my right side. (99.9% of my migraines are right-sided too.) Right now I’d say it’s taking up maybe a quarter of my central vision. It’s really hard to confirm my spelling at the moment so excuse any typos. When I first noticed it I gulped down 4 Aleve/naproxen sodium, 220 mg each (4-5 Aleve at the start of a migraine, 2 an hour later if needed, are approved by my neurologists; please don’t take doses like that without checking with your doctor), so hopefully the early warning will prevent most of a real migraine from hitting. That’s assuming I actually have the migraine, of course.
The first time I had the ocular migraine alone, I asked one of the ophthalmologists I work for to check my retina just to be sure. He did and confirmed it was just an ocular migraine.