avocado8

Craaaaap

The vision in my left eye is so kaleidescopic right now that it's difficult to see to type this, so don't be surprised if there are many typos. I'm going mostly by feel and what I can see out of my right eye. I'm having a crazy migraine—one that so far has produced not one but two bouts of blurry vision.

The usual progression of a migraine for me is:

1. Notice missing pixel or two in my forward field of vision.
2. Notice whole sections of scene missing.
3. Vision becomes kaleidescopic, mostly on one side. (Sometimes it seems as if it's on both sides, but it's almost always really on one.)
4. Kaleidescopic vision becomes so bad that it's dangerous to drive, especially if peripheral vision also goes on that same side (rarer). Can also be dangerous to walk, and it's definitely impossible to work (as I mentioned, I'm not seeing most of my computer screen right now).
5. Vision clears.
6. Ten to twenty minutes pass with no pain or vision problems.
7. Headache and/or neckache hits.

There are some variations, of course; with the last four or five migraines, for example, the blurry vision stage went so quickly I never had time to wonder if it *was* a migraine, and the headache never got bad enough to impair my normal routine (or make me want to sleep it off). Once after a hit to the chin that spun my head around in a hockey game, I got a migraine that was completely in my neck and shoulders (no headache at all, but really back neck and shoulder pain, preceeded by the blurry vision). This morning's double blurry vision session, however, is a new one on me. I got the headache/neckache as scheduled after the first blurry vision episode (which progressed so slowly—and coincided with my morning walk, when I was already squinting into the morning sun—that I didn't realize that I'd lost whole sections of my vision until someone greeted me with "good morning" and scared the heck out of me because I hadn't seen him coming), and then 90 minutes after the first episode started, the second launched. The first session included a loss of peripheral vision on the left, as evidenced by the fact that I knocked over a display of cookies on the Starbucks counter with my left hand when I reached for my coffee. I didn't even know what I'd hit until one of the packaged cookies rolled to my right.

I'm wondering if drinking caffeinated coffee—which I only do when I'm having a migraine because normally caffeine *produces* a headache—caused the second bout of blurriness? Or maybe it's just extra-raging hormones (the usual culprits in the migraine saga)? Whatever it is, it's a little scary.

Hm, interesting. The kaleidescopy has stopped now, but I see that I've still got a dark spot that's difficult to see through on the left. If I can't work through it, I may have to go back to bed for a while...

Update, 10:17am ~ Headache/neckache still present, shoulders now aching, too. Vision is better. Still fairly functional.