Optical Migraine Almost Killed Me

I’ve suffered from migraines since I was 12 years old. I’m 37 now. When I was 26 years old, I was working on a drawing during an art school class and my vision blanked out. Not all of it, just a pin point but I couldn't see what I was looking at. Then it turned into this sickening spinning fractal of light just twirling and twirling until it went away. 20 to 30 minuets later. I called my professor over and told him I could draw anymore. He just dismissed me. I felt sea sick and had to leave the class. That was my first optical nerve migraine. I’ve had them ever since.

It’s dumbfounding how one random day it happened without any triggers and this personal hell has been apart of my life from then on. 10 years now. No one has ever been able to explain to why it happens and they just keep telling me it’s harmless. It’s not harmless, if I’m driving when it happens, it’s not harmless to my employers when it happens and it not harmless to me when it happens. I’ve figured out how to deal with it after so long until last year. I had a particularly bad string of them every hour for an entire day. I could not get them to stop, my usual methods weren’t working. I just kept getting physically sicker after every wave passed. At some point during this episode that lasted 2 days my brain started bleeding. I had an ischemic stroke. Now, I have a fancy new heart monitor, atrocious hand writing and lots of brain farts but I’m doing okay. Though, I personally think the migraines are directly related to my stroke. The doctors don’t believe me.

I just had my first optical nerve migraine since the stroke and it scared the sh%$ out of me. My heart is fine by the way. 0 anomalies.