I was driving home earlier today, just a half mile from my house, when suddenly I had the sensation that I was…seeing things. More specifically: diamond shapes of light that flickered in and out of my sight. I think the brain at first acknowledges but does not process such experiences, because my eyes were doing the visual equivalent of brushing it all out of the way for a while.
But still they popped back in there: these diamond-shaped bursts of light that continued to flash and obstruct my vision. And I watched them, fascinated but worried, as I stared and stared at myself in the mirror when I got home.
One photographer's depiction of a migraine aura. In Russia.
“Seeing diamond shapes in vision” gets you about 267,000 google hits and as I squinted through the flashes of light the first words that popped out at me were “migraine aura.” Well now!
I called out to my older daughter, the only person in my family that I knew to have actually experienced migraines. Those migraine auras, I demanded, frantic but undeniably thrilled. Tell me what they’re like!
This is strange, right? Being thrilled to experience something like this when I knew what was soon to come? But it had never happened to me before.
I remember reading a book in high school in which a character had migraine auras and I will admit I was a tiny bit jealous. The whole thing sounded so glamorous.
I am not trying to make light of this. I knew that migraines themselves were severely painful, but as someone who had never experienced one, I couldn’t quite imagine the pain. (This is why women continue to have babies.) But I was fascinated by the idea of some kind of trippy warning sign beforehand.
It always seemed to me that really serious things never come with warning signs. Or maybe warning signs that only seem obvious after the fact? But this was something else entirely. A warning sign that was literally flashing right at me. I knew I had to take the time to really appreciate it, if that is the right word.
I kept stepping into my younger daughter’s room where both girls were hanging out on her bed. So now, the diamond shapes are flashing, I narrated, and there’s like a blank spot where I can’t see anything at all. My older daughter had a knowing smile on her face, but my younger daughter looked worried. This seems scary, she said. It’s not! I said, thrillingly. It’s not! I am seeing the most amazing things, but nothing hurts me at all! And it’s going to be over soon!
And it was. Suddenly it ended just as soon as it had started about 30 minutes earlier. I could feel something beginning to creep in. My temples were slowly starting to throb, but my vision was clear. The headache was coming.
I had been warned.
reyna eisenstark 