So, bored again, and been doing some looking into migraine auras. Its interesting to me how other people's symptoms line up with mine, and how they differ.
Aura, for the record, is the bizarro stage that happens just before migraines or seizures. They indicate that something is going very wrong in your brain, but give the benefit of allowing you to take measures to make yourself safe before the episode actually starts. For me, I remember them from childhood long before I can remember the actual episodes taking place. (My grandmother once bought me this coloring book of geometric patterns that you were supposed to fill in to make pictures and I remember being disturbed by the similarity between it and the images I saw.)
I do have a visual aura, but also weird sensory things going on. I smell/taste a very strong scent, something like smelling salts, formaldahyde or rubbing alcohol... a smell so sharp that it registers as more of a non-scent than an acual smell. It registers bizarelly, more towards the back of my throat and nose than something you're actually smelling, and tends to ebb and flow in strength and actual form; occasionally registering slightly more acidic, but sometimes almost like an aerosol undertone. It's a very industrial chemically smell, and one I've sensed components of frequentally in real life settings, but not anything I can ever firmly identify.
A lot of times I start to have this sense of disconnect, although it happens much worse afterwards than before. Usually I just don't feel like I can depend on my body to function. I usually describe myself as dizzy, but it's more like suddenly I feel like the floor might not hold me. It's totally illogical, and I know it, but the fact that I know that I'm going to lose my higher functioning very soon, so I usually tend to get down on the ground or lie down when this happens.
It's the visual aura that fascinates me. I've looked up other people's experiences, and they can be downright overwhelming. I'm almost disappointed that mine is less dramatic, because in its own way its something I'd love to experience. I remember when I found out about television test patterns, I thought of the visual auras as sort of being like that. Surprisingly, I wasn't that far from the truth. http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/patterns/ As I said, though my aura isn't as detailed as the intricate carpets they're showing on that site. There was an optical illusion that was featured on not one, not two but THREE of my psychology textbooks as an example of motion and is still the closest thing to what I see 90% of the time.
That, only monochromatic. Not neccessarily black and white, insomuch as maybe red and white, or yellow, or whatever. It comes into the perephery of my vision, like the slice of light you get around the edges when you wear sunglasses and slowly takes over slightly more of my periphery, sometimes floating out into a C into my vision. The thing is, it's opaque. I've tested myself, and I can see through it to what's beyond, it just takes a moment of pondering to see past the distracting concentric moving circles. One of the reasons I shy away from lights so much the second an aura starts is that its the areas of my vision that are taken up by the circles of doom are the areas that cause the sharpest bits of pain. Fortunetly, it never takes up too much of my vision, and frankly, my auras only last so long before the actual episode starts that it's not terribly a big deal in a horribly defeatist sort of way.
The ridiculous part is that seeing that when things happen that remind you of the aura, it actually panics you and in some way, you feel like you're going to start to have symptoms. I used to have class in a science building where the smell of chemicals would occasionally waft through the air and remind me of the scent I smell during the aura. It would be enough to make me dizzy with anxiety. There was a construction zone that had a similar smell to it and I couldn't walk past it. The person who bought one of those textbooks from me must have hated me because I blacked out the optical illusion with a magic marker. I'm not that bad anymore. But still, when I smell sharp chemicals, I run around like a crazy person asking other people if they smell it too. I used to have to very carefully calm myself when I worked when they'd paint and have paint thinner or spray for bugs.
By the way, I hate when I find thing out I didn't know. When looking for that link again, I came across this one from the same NY migraines blog, which I hadn't read. http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/lifting-lights-and-little-people/#more-12 There's a very famous incident in my family from when I was a child involving my seeing a man on a bicycle and watching him cycle under the furniture. I've read a lot contemplating how young migraines actually start, and I'm more and more wondering how long this has been going on with myself without my realizing it.
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