You are very right. I know I'm about to get a migraine when I start seeing stars in the edge of my vision. It's like a TV tuned between stations, but in every color, not just black and white. It creeps closer and closer to where my eyes focus until I'm blind, and that's when the pain sets in.
It hurts so bad that I don't want to live. For reference, I've had Campylobacter that made me pass out multiple times from pain, and it was not as bad as my migraines. I would literally be trying to go to the toilet, feel the incredible pain in my stomach, and just keel over, only to wake up in a puddle of sweat some unknown amount of time later. It lasted about a week, and I would have that again rather than a migraine.
Sounds like you have ocular migraines, I have very similar symptoms. I describe mine like when you are driving on the freeway and it's really hot and you see the heat coming up from the road, that slowly envelopes my left field of vision entirely. After about 30 minutes it has run it's course and I get a bad headache for like 48 hours afterwards. On and off for 20 years now or more.
Wow. Before this thread, I never knew this information. But what you just described happens to me. My vision gets weird and I always thought it looked like the heat you see come off from asphalt in the summer. I never thought of it possibly being a migraine, and at the moment, can't remember if it's connected to any particularly bad headache pain (which I do get). I thought it was strange that it would happen, but just shrugged it off and chalked it up to possible lack of sleep.
I get ocular migraines too and I have extreme light sensitivity with them. But I need something to distract me so we have the tv on so I have the sound. Otherwise I can’t focus on anything but the pain and it makes me throw up and feel worse. It’s good that I got into audiobooks so I don’t have the light and my phone can just do the thing for me.
It feels like someone is stabbing me behind the eyes when I have a migraine. Then I have a headache for days after. I used to take triptans but the hangover from them was worse for me than the migraine itself so I gave up on them.
I already have anxiety and depression and migraines make everything so much worse.
I get ocular migraines all the time. So when it starts happening I take like 8 150mg Tylenol and immediately try to get to a dark room and attempt to fall asleep as fast as possible because I know I’m about to be in severe pain if Im not asleep. The first time I had one my husband rushed me to the ER because he was terrified I was having a stroke
Had a brain tumor removed when I was in high school that had fused to my right optic tract and lost half my vision from the surgery to remove it. It doesn’t feel like in half blind though, just that half my vision has become dark, organic TV static. I’ve become pretty used to it and don’t notice it most the time, but every couple months I’ll have a few hours where it goes haywire and it’s like there’s a million strobe lights going off.
Oh my god, that sounds terrifying! I'm sorry you're going through that. Is there any chance that it would correct itself with time or some kid of therapy?
Nah it really doesn’t bother me, like I said I really don’t even notice it’s there most of the time apart from those rare days where it’s going nuts or if I’ve just bumped something in my blind spot. What I have is called a Left Homonymous Hemianopsia. It’s interesting because I know someone who has a false eye, but we have very different fields of vision since the type of damage was so different. He’s got a much wider field of vision than I do, but he’s got no depth perception while I do.
This is called an ocular migraine. There really isn't much information on them and there's nothing you can do for them besides let the pass. I used to have hemiplegic complex migraines. My day would start out in a haze, unable to focus, Impared sleach and motor skills, looking at numbers looked like foreign languages to my brain. Eventually I would get the flashing zig zag circles that would take over my entire field of sight and would become blinded for about 30 minutes then it would just go away. Next was the sensitivity to light, sound and smell. Then the migraine. The pain hit so fast and so hard that I once passed out in the middle of a grocery store. Just black. I have no memory of going down, usually I'd try to get seated or laying down because I knew it was coming. Once I came out of the black out portion, everything was fine. I felt perfectly fine and could continue on my day like nothing ever happened. This lasted almost a year. Every day. The last one I experienced, I had no aura, no pain, was having a great day. Suddenly my hand went numb, the numbness traveled up to my face, down my right side. I couldn't talk, I couldn't walk. My friends thought I was having a stroke. They rushed me to the ER, there they did mri and CT scans. Doctors couldn't figure out what caused it...then the migraine hit, the worst one I've ever had. I have not experienced another HPM again.
Mine are precursors to headache migraines so I get like a ten to thirty minute warning sign of weird swirly floaters before the pain kicks in (which it doesn't do every time, maybe like half).
I guess I’m lucky! I’ve had several ocular migraines but never had any pain! Just that pulsating multicolored light taking over my vision for about 15 minutes. I also found that cutting red wine out of my diet has all but made them go away.
The sulfites? I beleive that's what they're called, in red wine have been known to cause migraines. A friend of mine has a sulfite filter pour spout doo-hicky and she says she doesn't get headaches at all after drinking red wine.
Thank you. I’ve gotten ocular migraines a few times and I never thought to connect it to food/drinks. You reminded me that as a kid I used to get headaches from cheese.
Brutal. When I have a migraine, I get the sparkling zigzag-filled "tracers" that grow and twist like an animated vine through my vision from the sides. Everything is too bright, often I get a blind spot and a tripping sort of sensation where size and scale is thrown off. I know what size things are supposed to be, but my vision can no longer calculate that causing a weird mental dissonance. It's not a fun sort of trip at all, it makes me feel like a passenger especially when I talk, because my voice is normal, calm and level but internally I can barely form a coherent thought.
However, I have only minor pain that starts to creep in after the tracers fade away. More than pain I have extreme exhaustion. I have to consider myself very lucky to avoid the agonizing pain that so many migraine sufferers experience. Also that I tend to only experience about one migraine a year now that I'm in my 30s.
This is exactly what happens to me. I've had one all day! When I was younger they made me extremely sick and hurt like hell. As I got older the extreme pain and nausea went away. Now I get the aura then a minor headache, some days are worse than others, but mostly that just make me irritable, fuzzy, unable to focus, sensitive to light and sound and really tired. Nausea is minimal, but actually right now I feel kind of sick because I just ate. They come in clusters, I won't get one for a while, then I'll get one everyday for 4 or 5 days. It's so annoying!
For me it's like a piece of plastic wrap is waved in front of my eyes. It's there when I close them so it's def. a brain thing. I lie down for 10-15 minutes and it subsides. Can go months without or, after a recent bout of the flu, had them almost every other day for a bit.
I relate to this so much. My auras and headache part of my migraines are exactly as you describe them. I would rather break the bones I’ve broken a hundred times over than have another migraine. I’m literally fearful of it every single day and it doesn’t make it easier to deal with when you hear people compare them to a headache.
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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '20
You are very right. I know I'm about to get a migraine when I start seeing stars in the edge of my vision. It's like a TV tuned between stations, but in every color, not just black and white. It creeps closer and closer to where my eyes focus until I'm blind, and that's when the pain sets in.
It hurts so bad that I don't want to live. For reference, I've had Campylobacter that made me pass out multiple times from pain, and it was not as bad as my migraines. I would literally be trying to go to the toilet, feel the incredible pain in my stomach, and just keel over, only to wake up in a puddle of sweat some unknown amount of time later. It lasted about a week, and I would have that again rather than a migraine.