re: #242 ObserverArt

Is there such a thing as an ocular migraine?

I thought the ocular “aura” was always a part of a true migraine? It can be more or less intense, but isn’t it always a part of it?

Also, a lot of people call a bad cluster thumping headache as a migraine, but I thought migraines have to have the three classic elements. Aura, headache and nausea.

I know I usually had all three. As I got older, I would sometimes get a bit of an aura and then it would go away without the headache and nausea.

Yes, there is. It consist of nothing but the visual symptoms, in my case a small patch of my visual field that has a zig-zag pattern of distortion and a lighter/darker ‘flashing’ effect that reminds me of looking at crystals under polarized light and flipping the polarity. It starts as a small spot and grows to be a substantial portion of my visual field before shrinking away.

No pain, no numbness, no other symptom that I really notice.

I have had migraines in in the past, with no aura, just a pain that starts behind the eye and eventually leads to nausea, then barfing, then sleeping a long time. I discovered that if I took 800 mg of ibuprofen it would stop within 20 minutes, so I haven’t gone all the way through one in decades.

But migraines are idiosyncratic. I know what mine are. Others have different experiences.