I'm so sorry :( I had migraines when I was 15 -- the worst misery ever. Did the doctor say anything about medicine? I was under the impression that there are new meds out for migraines.

Both of your grandmothers suffered from occasional migraines. My mom only when she was young -20s and 30s. I have had maybe 2 migraines. Hopefully this will not repeat itself.

See a doctor. Take care of yourself. I love you.

Mom

Marian - The doctor said that with some types of migraines, there are drugs you can take when warning signs start appearing, but ocular migraines come on too fast for this type of treatment. If I start getting frequent migraines, I may want to consider daily preventive drugs, but the side effects are strong enough that I should avoid this if I don't need it.

Mom - That's kind of a relief. Hopefully this will be a rare event, not a frequent occurrence. Thanks.

Poor Courtney!! I am glad Ben took you to urgent care immediately. Those are some heavy-duty symptoms, and you don't want to mess with your head or eyes.

It may interest you to know that I have had mild occasional ocular or optical migraines since my auto accident in August 2006. I get visual effects only, except for once, when the headache PREceded the visual, and it wouldn't go away for a few days, even prevented me from sleeping/ woke me up, though it was not excruciating, just a lot of pressure. When the visuals came on, it went away. The doctor said a visual migraine happened to her once 15 years ago, and then again just before I came in that day. So you can hope they will be rare. Mine consist largely of metallic confetti images, or a shimmering lake of water in the center of my field of vision, or a scrim effect in front of everything. The headache I have only had once. And migraines do not run in any part of my families.

Take care of yourself! We love you.

Sue

I have infrequent migraines -- inconvenient and nasty, but certainly not debilitating. I'm a firm believer in managing/mitigating, assuming you do eventually have another (the drugs really are nasty). The keys are figuring out your triggers and developing a plan for getting home and getting into darkness and quiet at the first sign of trouble.

Mine seem to be triggered by stress, air pollution, rapid changes in altitude, and sudden, bright glares. And possibly excessive sodium intake. Oh, and you might check to see if you have glare reflected on your computer screen from outside or fluorescent light -- just turn off the screen and see what you see. I had a series of frequent migraines that ended when I moved my desk so the one source of sunlight is behind the screen.

I usually have at least a half hour between the first visual hallucinations and the explosion of headache. When I first start to get the weird effects in my peripheral vision, I take two advil and a double espresso and get on the bus to go home immediately. If the treatment works, I get a free sick day with little or no pain. If it doesn't, at least I'm home or almost home when it hits, and I don't end up stranded in the office. Also, I've found that driving with even the earliest symptoms is a terrible, terrible idea.

Anyway, I hope you don't need this advice, but I found it encouraging when I realized that I could maintain some minimal control over the situation even when I was sick. Maybe see you this weekend?

Thanks, Sue and Sara.

Yeah, I kind of realized half way home that driving was probably a bad idea, but by then I only had three miles to go so I stuck with it. I'm very glad that Ben was able to get the time off to take care of me.

I wonder if the lighting at my office may have contributed. I get pretty regular low-level headaches which I think are due to the very dim florescent lights set against my bright, bright monitor. We're moving to a LEED-certified office building in three weeks with much better lighting, and I'm hopeful that that will help.

If this happens again, I plan to take an ibuprofin and to lie down in a dark place for half an hour or so. The doctor said there's a chance that this will limit the extent of the migraine.

Yep, see you this weekend, Sara.

I would think you could adjust the brightness of your monitor if nothing else. Isn't there a hardware menu on it that you could tweak or something?

Another thing, and one of the things I'm constantly doing at work with the amount of hours I spend in front of a computer, is inverting whatever I'm looking at so that it's monochrome style white text on a black background. White backgrounds are ubiquitous and too much light in your eyes. But if I remember right, the newspaper has you using strange software, and I have a vague recollection that I've brought this up before and you told me you couldn't make adjustments like that.

Since everyone else chimed in... stress is one of my triggers. I think I'm more susceptible in tense times.
Also, I do not find ibuprofen all that effective. There is otc migraine stuff that consists
of acetominophin, caffeine, and aspirin (250 mg. of each). I find them helpful if I get to it in time.
I don't like the preventive stuff either.
If it becomes a reoccuring problem don't suffer-get a specialized pill. As you are now aware, it is a ridiculously awful pain to deal with.

Thanks, Ben. I will see what I can do about my computer today at work.

And thanks, Rian. I'll look for that pill. I honestly have no idea what triggered this thing.