Friday, October 24, 2008

Migraine Minus the Pain

Several minutes ago I started noticing something strange in the vision in my right eye. Toward the outer edge there was a semi-circular/crescent shaped area of zig-zaggy and wavy lights. I closed my eyes and it was still there. It seemed strange because I had just eaten (since I know that not eating enough can sometimes cause wavy lines in your periphery), and I hadn't knocked myself in the side of the head recently... I thought I'd check it out online, by Googling my symptoms.

The Internet did not let me down! When I described what was going on as specifically as I could, I found that I was having a visual migraine (AKA optical migraine, AKA ocular migraine). It is technically a migraine, although I do not have migraine problems. It is actually most often not accompanied by a headache. This site describes this in fairly simple terms. I had never experienced this before, but learned that it can be brought on by fatigue, stress, and changes in estrogen levels. I think I fit the bill for those things. As I'm writing this, it is already starting to go away (they can last 20 min. to an hour on average). Anyone else experience this before?

3 comments:

Kelly said...

Yeah, I had that happen last year sometime. It was weird and I was pretty worried. I went to the eye doctor and got checked out. There was only a very mild headache associated with it, but not a very bad one. It was definitely weird and was very noticeable - it interfered with my ability to read the computer screen well.

Mindy said...

i think i remember that but didn't know that's what it turned out to be... that's interesting. yeah it was really distracting and i was thinking "detached retina"... turns out it was really no big deal.

Leticia said...

Crazy... never even heard of it! I hope everything is better now! I think I would have been completely freaked out!