Saturday, September 1, 2007

What Is An Ocular Migraine ?

The first time I had on ocular migraine, it scared the daylights out of me! I thought I was having a stroke.

I rushed home and called my doctor's office. After describing my symptoms to the nurse, she said I was probably having an ocular migraine (also known as an optical migraine or an ophthalmic migraine).

What I experienced that scared me so much was this:

The middle of my field of vision became blurry. At first, I couldn't understand what was going on. I thought my eyes were tired. I noticed that I was having difficulty reading. (I'm a teacher and writer. Reading is a big part of my day.)

The blurry area grew. It had these weird looking zig-zags in it.

It became donut shaped, and the donut grew and grew until it was finally out of my field of vision.

The whole episode took about fifteen to twenty minutes.

After it was over, I felt washed out. Exactly like I feel after a migraine.

I went to see my doctor. He said I was indeed having an ocular migraine, probably due to stress and overwork.

How completely frightening, though. Until that moment, I had never heard of ocular migraines.

I decided to start gathering information about them and use my web skills to make this available to others. Which is why I'm starting this blog.

Reading is always a good thing to do to learn more about any illness. Here's a good overview of the visual aspects of migraines. The book is called Migraine Auras: When The Visual World Fails. Click here to take a look at it.

Also, here's a good article about ocular migraines.

I hope my blog helps you! I'll be posting more information as I find it.