Baby’s First Migraine

[beowabbit]

So I had my first migraine yesterday. I was very very lucky: it was quite short (only about 40min before it was mostly over), very mild, and it was the kind that does not involve much pain! (I know about those because sionnagh used to get them. Took years before she learned what they were, since you think of a migraine as involving, you know, a headache.)

I had some nausea and (as it got worse) a sense of disconnection and a hard time with short-term memory, and a little bit of a headache, but mostly it was visual effects. I first noticed something was going on when I was having trouble seeing my solitaire game on the train. (I was on my way to meet plumtreeblossom for dinner before rehearsal.) Some experimentation showed that I had a blind spot, or nearly blind spot, more or less in the center of my vision. That was the scariest part of the event, because I was afraid that something was going physically wrong with my eye or eyes, like maybe a detached retina. As it got worse, though, I started seeing faint shimmering and flashing geometric shapes, and feeling nauseous, and I knew what it was. By this point I wouldn’t have been able to read without great effort, but I never got to a point where I couldn’t navigate. I got to the restaurant and found plumtreeblossom, who had already ordered me food. I got some ibuprofen from her; it was probably only 15min after I'd originally noticed something wrong that I took it. Things got a bit worse over the course of dinner (although the nausea never got bad enough to interfere with eating; in fact, the food seemed to settle my stomach), but towards the end of dinner I was feeling a bit better and my vision was getting more normal, which made the prospect of participating in rehearsal for a radio drama a bit more realistic. By the time we were done with our food I was distinctly better, and by the time we got to the church basement for rehearsal, I was almost all better, with just a bit of residual headache and nausea and fatigue.

I hope this is not the start of a trend, although if they’re all that mild, it won’t be much of a problem.

Oh, and rehearsal was loads of fun!

Comments

[joyeous.livejournal.com]

I've never had the aura (though lots of people have) but many of my migraines involve more nausea than pain. In fact, sometimes for the first several hours, I don't know that I'm getting a migraine. All I know is that I don't feel like eating, not even full out nausea. I just feel like my stomach has shut down. The second symptom I get is that I feel unnaturally tired and I can't stop yawning. Now I know when I start feeling like that to take my scripts right away, because it's a precursor to when it gets really bad (i.e. pain and vomiting). Luckily for you yours went away on its own! Advil usually makes the nausea worse for me, as my stomach can't handle it if it's already upset.