Migraine with aura

As I was reading my friend's blogs this morning, the pinpoint of light in the center of my vision started, a bright whiteness which meant I couldn't see the very middle of each thing I looked at.  I thought, this must be what macular degeneration is like all the time.  But for me, that was a signal that for the next 10-15 minutes, I would loose my ability to see and read clearly.

The pinpoint quickly spread out in a familiar pattern, forming a circle that was ever-widening, but the center of my vision gradually returned.  I left the computer as the little rainbow colored prisms grew, like signal flags shimmering in a glowing semi-circle in both eyes.

I walked into the kitchen to get more coffee, thinking of how my mother had a stroke and lay on her kitchen floor over a day, sometimes shouting out the window to neighbors until they heard her.  But she wasn't taking the blood pressure medicine that I now take.  I do wonder however, if I might end up debilitated.  These parts of the body keep wearing out...and diseases creep in that we don't expect.

I am fortunate that I don't have pain associated with these migraines.  I do have sensitivity to light following them, but if it's not a bright sunny day (like today) I can go about my life after that visual interruption.

They started back when I was in my 40s that I remember. I will never forget the one that came as I drove on an interstate to my doctor's office in Atlanta.  There were semi trucks along side me, and I was trying to stay in my lane, by shifting my eyes back and forth to see clearly where I was.  By the time I got to the doctor I was a wreck, and started crying and said to the receptionist while I waited for my turn that I had gone blind.  That was the worst time I ever had with the visual impediment.  And the doctor referred me to a neurologist.  I was advised to not take birth control pills (which I wasn't on anyway.) I was recommended to drink caffeine.  And later I got some expensive pills for migraines that had to be taken right at the beginning of the headaches.  Since I seldom had pain, I didn't get more than one refill of them.

But where the aural migraines used to be only a few times a year, now they seem to happen more often.  Nothing in particular seems to trigger them, besides a glare of sunlight reflected at an angle into my eyes.  Sometimes having an eye exam would trigger them, from the bright light shown in my eyes.  This morning I was just reading a computer screen, which I do every day...so it's not an abnormal occasion.

As I've shared about having these migraines, I've found more and more friends also have them, sometimes with a very painful headache.  I remember hearing of (mainly in novels) various sufferers who have to go to bed in a darkened room with migraines.  It must be terrible for them.