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First Time Migraine

Hello everyone. My name is Casey, I'm a 28 year old male, 6'2 190lbs and live in central Indiana with my wife and 3 kids. A couple days ago I was at work putting a decal on an exterior window and then went inside to my office and started working on the computer. One of my employees came in to ask me a question and when I looked at her I noticed a small bright jagged line covering half of her face. It was like I looked at a lightbulb too long and it burned in my vision. I assumed it was from the sun when I went outside but quickly realized this wasn't the case.

I went to the restroom to try and calm myself down because I've neve experienced anything like this before. (I've been suffering from weekly mild headaches for over a year but never visual symptoms) Every sense we had kids I've been dealing with health anxiety so I quickly assumed the worst and drove myself to the hospital which is about 4 miles from my work.

In the car I noticed that my peripheral vision was wavy, that's the best way I can describe it. Also the jagged bright light was bigger and even appeared if I closed my eyes. I wasn't experiencing any head pain, just extreme anxiety and the visuals.

At the ER the doctor looked in the back of my eye, had me look at letters to determine if my vision was 20/20 or what. It was 20/20 in both eyes. He then numbed my eyes and checked the pressure of my eyes along with testing reflexes and asked me to smile and stick my tongue out. He also poked different spots on my head with a paper clip and asked if it felt sharp which it did.

All these test took maybe 20min. I got the the ER at 1:35 and was seen at 1:40. Before he started all these test the visuals had subsided but I was left with a throbbing headache on the left side of my head. He gave me some medicine for the headache and told me everything looked normal and that I had a migraine with aura.

I've never experienced these visuals before and now my anxiety is high because I'm In fear that it will happen again. I notice that I've been getting what feels like a spider web on the right side of my face and I'll rub it and it goes away and will come back a few min later. Is this a symptom of silent migraine? What are some things I can do to prevent these headaches and aura. I'm just really worried it something more sinister. Thank you for reading this and I apologize for the 1000 word essay I wrote. ; )

  1. I forgot to mention something else that's happening. When I was experiencing this head pain it would intensify when I coughed. Not sure if this is a normal migraine issue or what. Thank u

    1. Hello Casey,
      Welcome to Migraine.com! We are happy you have found us and we are here to help. No need to apologize for the length of your post. We appreciate you sharing your story in its entirety and hope we can provide you with some resources to start managing your migraine with aura as well as the accompanying anxiety.

      First, I wanted to provide you with more information on migraine with aura:
      https://migraine.com/migraine-types/migraine-with-aura/

      The symptoms that you experienced (the bright jagged line & weird feeling on your face) are very common symptoms of migraine with aura.

      You had also mentioned silent migraine and I wanted to share an article on that topic with you as well:
      https://migraine.com/migraine-types/silent-migraine/

      Now that you have a diagnosis, we encourage you to see a migraine specialist (if you aren’t already) to help develop a treatment plan for you.
      https://migraine.com/blog/how-are-migraine-specialists-different/

      Please know that you are not alone in this and there are hundreds of treatment options at your disposal!
      I will share with you our overview of treatment for migraine however, your doctor will go over more specificially what s/he thinks is best suited for you.
      https://migraine.com/migraine-treatment/

      I hope that these resources are helpful to you and we will be here if you have any follow up questions, comments or concerns.

      Best,
      Jillian (Migraine.com Team)

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