The First Time I had a Migraine Aura

From what I've heard, migraines are serious business. Many of my family members have been struck by the sensitivity to light, to sound and to smells, often with a heaping serving of nausea and vomiting. I remember migraine days growing up, when my mom would retreat to her room and use towels over the windows to black out the light as best as she could and just try to sleep through the pain.

I know my brother has been "lucky" enough to get the kind migraines where he almost always throws up when he has one.

I have been legitimately lucky enough to never have had an actual migraine. The only thing that I've experienced is the migraine aura, which has now happened to me twice. This is the story of the first time.

The first time had to have happened on a Tuesday or Thursday. I know this because it happened while I was playing WoW and we happened to play WoW on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the time. I don't know if you've ever had a migraine before. If you have, this may sound familiar. If you haven't, you might think I was experimenting with drugs. I promise you, I was not.

I was looking at my screen to see what someone had written in chat, and I noticed that although my computer screen was clearly displaying the text, I couldn't read a certain spot on the screen. I blinked a few times and looked at the chat box again. My brain knew that there were words there, and I could read some of them, but on the left bottom side of the box, the words were non-existent. It was like trying to read something in a dream.

Blinking again, I shifted my focus on the screen. The blind spot seemed to shift with me. From the corner of my eye I could see the unknown letters start to form into words. But when I try to read them, they disappeared again.

"I think there might be something in my eyes," I said tentatively to my husband, who was sitting next to me at his computer. Over voice chat, I told our guildmates that I had to get up for a minute so Smiley could check and make sure nothing was in my eye.

Unsurprisingly, there was nothing in my eye. But what had been just a blind spot was starting to turn into something else. There were flashes of color sort of in the shape of a "c", with jagged, torn looking black edges. I was at a loss for what it could be.

My guildmates had a better idea than I did. I explained what was happening and those who had had migraines agreed that it sounded like a visual aura. I hadn't been freaking out too much before, despite the whole suddenly having dancing color tears on the left side of my field of vision, but now the thought that I could have a migraine and might throw up made me upset.

My brother was online, so I messaged him to ask for his advice, which was to go take ibuprofen and lie down and hope that I fell asleep before the headache hit. That sounded reasonable, and it was getting late.

The next morning I woke up with clear vision and no signs of a headache. And then I pretty much forgot about what happened, until it happened again recently. But that's a story for when my stupid pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel pain goes away and I can write another post!