Migraine Update

You can probably guess that I’m doing better since there hasn’t been a migraine update in a while.

To bring everyone up to speed, I’ve been seeing visual auras every day since late June. They got pretty bad in July (seriously disruptive), so I started taking the Scary Rash Medicine. They got better for a while, and by late August they were almost gone – just a faint shimmer or distortion or a quick flash one a few times a day. And then they started to get worse again. The doctor upped my dose of the Scary Rash Medicine, and I started to get better.

All that to say, it’s pretty rare for me to see the auras just out of the blue, but there are two things that will consistently bring on an aura. One is staring at the same spot for more than 5 seconds in a row (happens when trying to fix mistakes in craft projects). The other is leaving my home during the daytime.

Specifically, it is the security screen that triggers the migraine aura. It’s the perfect storm of edge-detection, light vs. dark, figure vs. ground, and a busy pattern to set off some irritated neuron in my visual cortex.

Here’s a picture of the view out my front door as well as a closeup.