A day in The Life of a Migraineur

Aura Migraine Jan 15th 2017

I woke up with a slight headache at 5am on the left side of my head. Not strong enough to take medication. It seemed to fade away. (It was cold in the night I my head was exposed, my hat had come off during the night).

Around five hours later I started to notice my vision was not right. Like when you look at the sun accidentally and you have an image of the sun on your retina for a while. Whilst I am writing this I took a migraine pill (09:45). I really hope I caught it in time.

It is hard to type because I have lights flickering in my vision causing a blind spot. Seems to be both eyes and located in the lower left of my sight. It is steadily growing. The interesting thing is that I don’t have a headache yet, this worries me a bit.

The last time I had aura was about 10 years ago. It lead to the worst migraine I have ever had. I am noticing a slight ache on the right side behind my right eye. The flickering creates a blind spot in my field of vision. It is 10am now. I am just waiting to see what happens now. The aura has reduced now, I think I managed to catch it just in time. I hope so.

10:20 and the pain in the right side is there, dull but definitely present. The aura is gone, I have just made myself a coffee, some say it helps, I am not sure but anything is worth a shot, it is coffee time after all. As always I get thick mucus in my mouth when migraine attacks occur. This one is no different.

The last time I suffered from aura I noticed that the flickering zig-zag effect started in a small area of my vision. This migraine was the same. I noticed that I couldn’t focus in the center of my vision. I tested this phenomena by looking at different things, rubbing my eyes but it remained the same. Then the alarm bells started ringing. Slowly over the course of 15 minutes the aura grew to fill almost half my left-side field of vision. The last time this happened I compared it to trying to walk whilst looking through the bottom of a glass. Out of focus and distorted. This time was the same.

That first time I had the mother of all migraines. I suffered tremendously for the following six hours in bed, nothing could take the pain away. Like someone has sunken an ice-pick into my brain. Now at least I can take solace in the fact that I have a medication that works most of the time. Having said that, it has been ten years since I last had an Aura migraine. Lets see if my meds work on this one.

10:50 - The pain in my right hemisphere behind my right eye has worsened. Just gradually becoming more present so much so that I can’t ignore it. I will take a second migraine pill, I hope it helps, because the coffee didn’t. Only recommended to take a second pill after 2 hours from the first. Need to wait for 40 minutes or so.

“So Mr King, What triggered your migraine?” Bloody good question. Yesterday was Saturday, totally regular day without excess is any area such as diet, alcohol, sleep, caffeine. The only factor that may have triggered it could possibly be getting a cold head whilst sleeping.

11:30 - The pain seems to have leveled off, in other words not getting worse. I will try and refrain from taking more drugs since I don’t like their side-effects mainly sensitivity to extremes of temperature. Still have a gummy mouth though.

11:50 - Decided to take a second dose. The pressure behind my right eye was becoming uncomfortable. There is no need to suffer unduly. Hopefully lunch will also help my recovery.

13:00 - Migraine hangover stage. Pains almost gone now, just feel weak. I pray that’s it for this week.