Ocular Migraine

When I had another one today, I decided to read  open the book Migraine  which my friend Anne  loaned me when I was in Corvallis. We are both huge fans of Oliver Sacks for his wit, his curiosity and his compassion. It is perhaps not the book to try to read while you are having a migraine of any description

What I like about Oliver Sacks work is that he has respect for his patients and doesn't ever treat them like freaks, even when their symptoms are extremely freakish. He wrote:: When I saw my first migraine patient, I thought of migraine as a peculiar type of headache....As I saw more patients, it became apparent that headache was never a sole feature of a migraine, and, later still that it was not even a necessary feature of all migraines....I was moved, therefore, to enquire further into a subject that appeared to retreat before me....I returned to my patients whom I found more instructive than any book.

There is no headache with an ocular migraine, or at least not a severe one, but it is very disorienting, and difficult to see. The visual effects usually only last for about a half hour, but the disorientation and slight headache can last considerably longer. 

The picture on the phone is a sort of representation of it, except that it is more three dimensional and it glitters. It seems to vary a lot from one person to the next, and even at different times for the same person,, and is difficult to describe. It is very reassuring to read that you are not having a stroke or a brain tumor, going mad or suffering from some kind of bizarre hysteria. It is essentially a benign condition which is experienced by countless numbers of people.

That being said, I will now do a bit of independent research on the effect of a glass of wine on the aftereffects. Common sense dictates that too much wine often creates similar symptoms to ocular migraines, but having now experienced both, I don't think I would equate glittering zig zags within one's field of vision with a case of the 'whirlies'.