Ocular migraines are frightening and disorienting and disruptive.

At 11:10 AM today I had another ocular migraine. I took two Naproxen 375 MG as recommended by my doctor, and the wavy, scrolling, flashing lights subsided. I still felt like I was walking around in a fog for the rest of the day. The flashes of light, zigzagging patterns, blind spots, and scintillating images might be interesting in a movie, but not like an evil, glittering shroud over my vision. They are frightening, disorienting, and disruptive.

My ocular migraines affected both eyes, they caused me difficulty reading, general weakness, and fatigue. Before age sixty-two I typically did not have any sort of headache, and had never experienced an ocular migraine. I wearied of those ocular migraines, even though they were painless. I experienced them primarily from 2011 through 2016 when they stopped after I was rear-ended by a truck while stopped in traffic.

Clinically, I experienced a hyperactive period of irritability just prior to onset of an ocular migraine; then forty-five minutes of loss of vision and very bright, flashing, zigzag lines of light scrolling down before my eyes, and flickering, changing jagged forms. Sometimes I felt oddly euphoric which was upsetting because it was so incongruous. I felt exhausted and drained afterward.

Caption: Ocular migraines are frightening, disorienting, and disruptive by Annmarie Throckmorton, 2017.