What is Aura?

A migraine envelops three stages: prodrome, the headache phase, and postdrome.  Unique symptoms mark each of these stages, which are sequential for most migraine sufferers, excepting chronic migraine sufferers, of which I was one last spring.  For the chronic migraine sufferer, the symptoms of any of the three stages can present themselves at any time, uniquely or overlapping.  Having chronic migraines is like swimming in the alphabet soup of migraine symptoms.  And I don't know how to swim.

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.