Weird migraine symptom: a deep sense of foreboding
We all seem to have an eclectic assortment of prodrome symptoms, signs that a migraine attack is moving in. I have migraine with aura, and auras (changes in vision, tingly skin on half of my face, and sudden increased sensitivity to light and sound are my main signs).
A strange prodrome symptom
Here’s a weird one for the Janet G. migraine record books: a deep sense of foreboding.
This has only happened to me a handful of times that I know of, and it’s been mostly in the last 6 months or so. Maybe I have had this sense before previous attacks but didn’t take note of it, chalking it up to a weird mood and not anything migraine-related. But it’s happened enough now that I’m pretty sure it’s migraine-related.
A deep sense of foreboding
It’s not that I feel depressed or sad as part of my prodrome (though that happens, too). It’s that I have a cinematic feeling of deep foreboding, an unshakable sensation that something is very, very wrong. It’s been strong enough that I’ve worried I’ve become temporarily psychic but am only able to predict vaguely terrifying things. I’ve worried that I would later look at the date and realize that my feeling of fear and dread was directly related to some global catastrophe — that somehow I knew about this terrible event before the majority of the world was made consciously aware.
It disappears once the attack sets in
Each time this has happened to me, the sense of foreboding disappears as the migraine sets in fully. As I decide which medication to take (if any) and how to treat my migraine attack, I look back with a Homer Simpson-style “D’oh!” when I see that the feeling of unavoidable dread was perhaps related to an early stage of migraine.
Who else has this sensation?
I mentioned this to a few real-life friends with migraine (not that you guys don’t exist in real lif e —it’s just that we mostly are comrades in this virtual community). Two people said they didn’t have this sensation, ever, but they gave me the benefit of the doubt. After all, most of us have learned the hard way that migraine can be different for everyone. One friend had an "aha!" moment when I told her about my realization, though — turns out the same thing happens to her regularly and, through a little sleuthing in her personal journal and her migraine diary, she was able to see a pattern whereby she got a strong feeling of dread and dismay shortly before a migraine arrived.
Have any of you had this sensation? How do you deal with it? Do you ever experience such a strong sense of dread when you are not migraining? What other weird side effects/symptoms do you wonder about?
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