Boss! De Pain! De Pain!
Nov. 14th, 2002 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyI’m susceptible to migraines. This has only been the case for a year or two, and they seem to be triggered by stress. This would explain why it is that I had a lot as NC, and I’ve been getting them again recently due to work being a proper pain in the bum at the moment.
Now, when people talk about ‘blinding headaches’, they aren’t kidding. One of the things that indicates a migraine is coming on is loss of vision. This takes the form of a shimmering patch, large or small, in the field of vision – it looks not unlike a patch of static from a TV tuned out of channel. Depending on how big this patch of blindness is, you can estimate how bad the headache is likely to be. The first time I had a migraine I lost the vision completely in one eye for several hours. Naturally, I panicked about this (my father went blind in one eye several years ago, and I feared the same) and ended up in hospital in a bit of a state.
On my way home from work today, I noticed I was getting one, and so I decided to keep notes on how it went and how it developed, and here they are.
18:00
Just got o the train from Victoria and noticed a very small silvery patch just offset to the left of my field of vision. Quite small, but it means that I’ve got a migraine on the way, probably in about half an hour.
18:10
Train arrives at Battersea park. The silvery blind spot is growing, but I notice that it isn’t perfectly silvered; under orange street lighting, it actually seems to reflect the light like the surface of water, meaning that although for the most part it’s like TV static, it has ripples of orange light moving across or within it. I wonder why this is?
18:22.
By the time I’ve got home, the blind spot has expanded to fill pretty much the entire left third of my field of vision. Imagine that your field of vision is perfectly circular (it isn’t, but it’s the easiest way to explain). Now imagine that a crescent moon-shaped field of blindness covers the left hand third, like the shadow of the moon moving over the disk of the sun in an eclipse. It’s the same sort of blindness that you sometimes get when you stand up sharply; not darkness, but more an absence of any sort of visual information at all. It’s disorienting, as you find yourself overcompensating for the expanse of you cannot see, and also frightening. It makes me realise what my dad & other blind people go through all the time. The possibility I may myself go blind one day is probably my single greatest personal fear.
18:27
Pre-emptive painkillers & water. Retire to darkened room. Take morphine-based cough medicine to make myself sleep.
18:3?.
Pain hits. This is going to be a bad one. People describe a migraine as like skewers or pokers being thrust into your head. This is because most of the pain is centred along the optic nerves and so the pain follows them from the back of the eye into the front of the brain. Around them the frontal lobes throb – the same sort of pain as you get if you tie a cord round your finger and the blood pressure increases. It feels like the front of your brain is under intense pressure and wants to burst forth form your skull, whilst at the same time the localised, but different, pain along the optic nerve lances into it. Ow
18;?
Manage to sleep, after the drugs kick in.
Now, when people talk about ‘blinding headaches’, they aren’t kidding. One of the things that indicates a migraine is coming on is loss of vision. This takes the form of a shimmering patch, large or small, in the field of vision – it looks not unlike a patch of static from a TV tuned out of channel. Depending on how big this patch of blindness is, you can estimate how bad the headache is likely to be. The first time I had a migraine I lost the vision completely in one eye for several hours. Naturally, I panicked about this (my father went blind in one eye several years ago, and I feared the same) and ended up in hospital in a bit of a state.
On my way home from work today, I noticed I was getting one, and so I decided to keep notes on how it went and how it developed, and here they are.
18:00
Just got o the train from Victoria and noticed a very small silvery patch just offset to the left of my field of vision. Quite small, but it means that I’ve got a migraine on the way, probably in about half an hour.
18:10
Train arrives at Battersea park. The silvery blind spot is growing, but I notice that it isn’t perfectly silvered; under orange street lighting, it actually seems to reflect the light like the surface of water, meaning that although for the most part it’s like TV static, it has ripples of orange light moving across or within it. I wonder why this is?
18:22.
By the time I’ve got home, the blind spot has expanded to fill pretty much the entire left third of my field of vision. Imagine that your field of vision is perfectly circular (it isn’t, but it’s the easiest way to explain). Now imagine that a crescent moon-shaped field of blindness covers the left hand third, like the shadow of the moon moving over the disk of the sun in an eclipse. It’s the same sort of blindness that you sometimes get when you stand up sharply; not darkness, but more an absence of any sort of visual information at all. It’s disorienting, as you find yourself overcompensating for the expanse of you cannot see, and also frightening. It makes me realise what my dad & other blind people go through all the time. The possibility I may myself go blind one day is probably my single greatest personal fear.
18:27
Pre-emptive painkillers & water. Retire to darkened room. Take morphine-based cough medicine to make myself sleep.
18:3?.
Pain hits. This is going to be a bad one. People describe a migraine as like skewers or pokers being thrust into your head. This is because most of the pain is centred along the optic nerves and so the pain follows them from the back of the eye into the front of the brain. Around them the frontal lobes throb – the same sort of pain as you get if you tie a cord round your finger and the blood pressure increases. It feels like the front of your brain is under intense pressure and wants to burst forth form your skull, whilst at the same time the localised, but different, pain along the optic nerve lances into it. Ow
18;?
Manage to sleep, after the drugs kick in.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-11-14 10:10 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-11-15 01:17 am (UTC)I usually stoke myself up on sleepy medicine and knock myself out for the duration.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-15 02:33 am (UTC)Fortunately I rarely get pain with it, just the visuals.
Mind seems to be tannin driven. I get it after drinking red wine (well SOME red wine) and tea.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-15 10:33 am (UTC)Your description of skewers and simultaneous throbbing is one of the most accure I've seen, but even then it doesn't sounds half as bad as it feels.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-15 04:01 pm (UTC)very true
Maybe Nc needs to come with a government health warning.
I don't get silver, I get greenish shimmers. Lime green at that. Most odd.
Aside from nightclubs - on reason I don't go clubbing - stress is my major cause as well. I find ibuprofen works the best as well - though I take too much of it as it's cheaper than getting the prescriptions. I also meditate - odd but it works