This autumn, I've experienced migraines again after a summer respite. Thankfully, my migraines have not returned with the ferocity with which they attacked me last spring. I do not have chronic migraines now as I did then. This new migraine experience has allowed me to distinguish the symptoms of each phase of a migraine and I can now predict when the headache phase will hit me like a ton of bricks because the prodrome symptoms present themselves distinctly from the headache and other ensuing symptoms.
During prodrome, I often experience a melange of the following symptoms:
-aura
-flashes of light or color
-blurred vision
-partial loss of sight
-numbness or tingling on face and/or arms
-partial paralysis
-weakness and perceived heaviness of limbs on 1 side of the body
-problems understanding written and spoken language
-mental confusion
-disorientation
-mood changes
-irritability
-lethargy
Aura?
Yes, things and people appear to glow, as if they have multi-colored halos. When the carved words on the benches at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden suddenly became illegible wavy lines, I knew a migraine was settling into my body. I walked down a hallway another day last week and at the corner, where the wall should fall in one continuous line from ceiling to floor, I saw a discrepancy of about 2 inches about waist-high, the bottom half of the wall jutting into the hallway beyond the top half. When I dazedly ran my hand along the corner joint from top to bottom, though, it made one continuous smooth movement. But it disappeared from sight for a bit right where that discrepancy appeared to me. Kerry glows purple. I smell phantom smells - rotten eggs, natural gas. Aura is weird because it can be my normal.
This Thanksgiving, I chose to give thanks for sickness and for health. In art class last year, I learned that Van Gogh suffered from migraines, too. "He actually saw the world differently," a fellow student announced, and he painted his world.
