The migraine attack I’m in the middle of is mild. The pain is a 3, I’m only moderately fatigued, and my cognition is not impaired. Since those three symptoms are usually the most disabling for me, I should be able to do the work I woke up eager for. Except blurred vision has decided to make an appearance during this attack.
Blurred vision is a common part of the visual aura that precedes the pain phase of a migraine attack. A year ago I learned that it can also occur any time during the attack. This became intimate knowledge after blurred vision suddenly added itself to the constellation of migraine symptoms I might experience. It doesn’t happen to me a lot, but is quite pronounced when it does.
It’s one of those symptoms that cannot be relieved and there are few workarounds. Driving is out, so is looking at my phone. The computer is nearly impossible to read. When I magnify the text enough that I can read it clearly, it throws off the formatting, thus making it hard to read for a different reason. Fortunately, my e-reader on the largest print setting (which is about five words a page) lets me lose myself in books. Since the migraine attack is otherwise not too bad today, I’m going to try to put a coat of stain on drawers I’m refinishing.
I had migraine for many years before I realized that I was experiencing more than a headache. Now the other symptoms are so prominent that I can barely see past them. Yes, they literally blur my vision, but they also interfere with my life more than the one symptom that everyone associates with migraine does. Even with all my migraine experience, the depth and breadth of non-pain symptoms continue to astonish me.
(I almost included a picture with this post, but it seems cruel to make other people with migraine look at a blurry image.)
Kerrie, I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time with your vision. I, too, feel that in younger days the almost solely debilitating part of my migraines was the pain. But over the years it’s sometimes astonishing to me how much difficulty the other symptoms cause. The fatigue and physical weakness are constant, and the eye & ear sensitivities are severely limiting, causing me to spend most of my time alone, in silence. I also have a hopeless sensitivity to simply having too many people around me – even if the lights are low and I’m wearing earplugs. Something about their movement and mere presence in the space around me seems to cause nausea & exhaustion to a point where I can no longer sit up. I have to slink off and find a room to rest in, by myself. I just can’t believe how much is happening in my body that is part of migraine.
The fact that it keeps changing over time, like your recent blurred vision, is another source of confusion and management difficulty. It can take me many months, or longer, to realize that a new roadblock is a migraine symptom.
Oh well. … and the beat goes on…
Thanks for your post and for all that you do here.