I just spent 30 minutes convinced that I was dying, after being interrupted mid-way through an article by the sudden appearance of a massive blind spot in my peripheral vision. Reading was impossible; walking, disconcerting; a look in the mirror yielded the panic-inducing impression that half my jaw had completely disappeared. When I reached for the bathroom light switch, it seemed to wink out of existence; I missed it completely and swiped my hand over blank wall an inch to the right.
Looking back, I am amazed that I managed to wait a full half-hour before calling my dad in a total fucking panic.
"Is it a brown spot?" asked, after listening to my minute-long, rapid-fire gibbering conviction that I was about to go blind and die.
"No!" I wailed. "It's kind of... shimmery, I guess! And I CAN'T SEE MY FAAAAACE!"
I am also amazed that my dad -- despite the incredible unhelpfulness of my repeated hysterical shrieking about aneurysms -- managed to diagnose me within two minutes. Seriously, the man deserves an award. Maybe several.
The verdict: ocular migraine.On the upside, I am not about to go blind and die.
On the downside, I am about to get hit with the mother of all pukey headaches.
On the upside, I am not about to go blind and die. If this sort of full-body relief is what hypochondriacs feel after every self-diagnosed freakout that turns out to be nothing, I definitely get the appeal.
6 comments:
Something like this happened to me before. I was sitting in my bed reading when a weird dot appeared smack in the middle of my field of vision. Obviously, it made reading impossible and I had the momentary panic of "WTF! How am I supposed to dial 9-1-1 if I can't see?!" But then I decided to take a nap, reasoning that not being able to see wouldn't bother me if my eyes were closed. I know, rock solid logic. Anyway, I woke up 2 hours later with my vision and sanity restored.
I'm glad you're not dying! But I'm sad that you're in for a terrible migraine.
wow!....that's freaky
(could the light bulb thing have caused this??)
I started having these in 2007. For me they're brought on by tofu. Yes tofu. Weird, eh? My body decided that whatever it is in tofu that isn't processed by the body was going to cause this to happen once daily until I stopped eating tofu. I drove myself to the ER the first time it happened because I, too, was convinced I was going blind and was going to die. Unfortunately, the ER staff was unable to diagnose it properly. My friend was the one who figured it out. I sometimes get headaches afterward, and other times not. The migraine aura usually disappears after 20 minutes or so. Hope you're ok.
That sounds positively frightening. Migraines are bad enough, but to have vision loss with them? I would have reacted exactly the same way. I hope it wasn't too bad and that you were able to bounce back quickly.
I used to get these a fair bit when I was around 19/20ish. I remember one coming on when I was driving my 45minute commute to Uni, and by the time I got to Uni my brain felt like it was trying to escape from my skull via my eye sockets.
I literally couldn't drive home, so I had to go to "sick bay" at University and have a nap... great for the ol' street-cred.
I haven't had one for years and years, so I figured it must've been an allergy to something at the time.
Dear Kat,
It's been twenty some days since your last confession. Get out of the sads. We miss you. Kisses!
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