Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Migraine?

I'm putting this here just so I don't forget when it happened.

I think I had an ocular migraine today. Or perhaps a migraine with aura.

I was trying to read a magazine while I was eating breakfast after my run and I noticed that some of the words were a little blurry. I thought at first that my glasses were cruddy (they were, but cleaning them didn't solve the problem). Then I thought maybe something was in my eye. Nope. Looking around the room I didn't seem to have a big vision problem. Maybe some slight fuzzy spots but when I tried to read there was no question that something was wrong.

I closed my eyes and I could see in my right eye a bright zig-zaggy design like a backwards C. It was almost like the bright flash you get after somebody takes your picture only this wasn't a round spot and it was more yellow and white and shaped like a vibratey zig-zag.

I felt perfectly fine, although now I was worried that I was starting to go blind, and I finished my breakfast and drove to work. By the time I got to the office, it was gone.

I felt fine at first but after I was here for a bit I developed a headache that was cured by a single Motrin. I don't know if the headache was from the weirdo eye thing or from the fact that I didn't have my normal cup of coffee on the drive in. (I was too hot to want to drink a hot drink.) I did have a diet Coke on the way to work so there was some caffeine in my system.

When I got to work I started to comb the internet and looked up stuff about eyes and exercise and ultimately found pages like this one with a picture that was surprisingly similar to what was going on in my right eye today. My zig zag faced the other direction and wasn't quite that colorful but the zig zag semi-circle was right on.

I read more here and learned that that crazy vision thing can be caused by the eyes or by the brain and that usually if it's the retina the zig zag goes away when you cover your eye. Not so with me, so I think my brain was responsible.

The stuff I found online said this could happen once in a lifetime or frequently so for now I guess I'm just going to wait and see.

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