Learning from your own experience.

[Floppit]

I've no clue which bit this should go in so I'll start here and if it needs moving I'm all good with that (long as it isn't junk! :undecided:).

Years ago I had a migraine - the only one I've ever had in my life. I was swimming when it started and thought my costume was coming off but it wasn't, parts of my body were going numb, I only had a mild headache at the time. I drove home worried and with pins and needles plus numb bits. About an hour later I was struggling to speak, I can't remember if I could 'think' whole sentences or just a sense of the meaning, what I wanted to say. Hubby was working away and I phoned my best friend who's a nurse. Fast forward a few hours and I was in hospital with a suspected stroke. Over those hours I experienced not being able to get words out but at the time was too worried it was serious to play with it and I utterly regret that. I wish I'd tried to read, write, label, my comprehension was perfect but my speech was all over the place. All the symptoms wore off over the night and scans in the morning led to the conclusion that it had been a migraine, phew! I have told just about every person who knows me that if it EVER happened again or even if I had something worse to remind me to have a play, I've even said some basic things I'd want to try or anything their imagination conjures up.

It's too interesting to be on the inside of something read about, not for generalisation to whole populations, for me not even for empathy although I'm sure that would be a side effect - there's just something about it, if I could induce the same state safely I would, just to know what I was thinking, how I was thinking, to record an individual visit from the interior! I get totally why through history people have at times experimented on themselves and I doubt it has always been for lack of a willing (or unwilling) victim.

Has anyone else ever experienced anything like this, or felt oddly lucky to experience something unusual even if unpleasant just because there's a curiosity about it?

[seren]

I too have had one migraine, and one only, when I was about eleven. I didn't have anything as interesting as you, though, just a blinding headache, vomiting and numb hands.

One interesting thing happened when I was about ten. Excuse the unpleasantness, but I had been constipated, so my mother gave me milk of magnesia. Not long afterwards I got pretty ill. Among other things I shan't go into, my vision screwed right up. I remember being utterly fascinated by it. You know when you (in the old days) would try to tune a TV and get snow, with vague shadows of images? Like that. Everything was black and white and sort of pixelated. It was Assembly time, and I was stood in the corridor with a crowd of Infant school kids all around me heading into the hall as I tried to get to the sickroom like a salmon going upstream. Apparently I was white as a sheet.

I wasn't panicked at all, more intrigued, which is why I remember the scene as well as I do- I was looking around taking everything in. I recovered pretty quickly. Wikipedia suggests I had a reaction to the milk of magnesia, although it doesn't mention the vision stuff. Might be part of what they call "weakness"? In Googling just now, I came across "snowy vision" as a recognised disorder. It is interesting, and I'm glad I experienced it. Mainly because I got a day off school! ;D

[chaggle]

This must be the "I've only ever had one migraine" club. I had mine at age 11 - I'll never forget it and I hope I never have another.

[Floppit]

Uhmmmmmm... I wonder if the word migraine is used for any unexplained brain fart?

I think had mine been more painful rather than just scary I'd be nervous of another but as it is - I'm flaming gutted it never crossed my mind to experiment. Roll on migraine number 2!

[chaggle]

I'm damned sure that the word "Migraine" is much abused and frequently used to describe a simple bad headache. I've had many bad headaches but only that one with distorted vision and a very sick feeling (although I didn't actually vom). I don't want another.

[panama]

There are a number of forms of migraine ( and I'm prepared to be corrected on this by the various medical people around here) and attack patterns. My mother ( and I believe my grandfather) suffers from the most familiar form that requires lying down in a dark room for a day or so with blinding headaches and nausea.

The form I get is a twenty minute to hour long attack that only really affects my vision though there is sometimes a mild headache. My vision disturbances consist of what I can only describe as kaleidescope patterns that sparkle just on the periphery of my field of vision. A bugger if I'm driving or trying to type. There appear to be two triggers for the attacks, tiredness and moving from an area of dim light into one of much brighter light.

My daughter also gets migraines, primarily of the blinding headache type. These have been associated with her, already established, epilepsy. There is, I believe, a strong link between the two conditions as well as a genetic component.