hey everyone. i have really been struggling with my health for the past few weeks, which is why i haven't been posting very much and commenting on blogs, or been active much online at all. unfortunately it has been mostly centered around my migraine headaches/problems that i have been having with my eyes, which tends to get worse with using electronics a lot! a lot of times when i am sick, i just relax on the couch and watch movies or tv, or play games on my phone. when i am having pain in my eyes (as a lot of you are familiar with), that's the last thing you want to do or even can do, because it makes it a lot worse. so that's why i haven't been around much.
i have never had "typical" migraine headaches, where you just get bad pain and take some aspirin or whatever and they go away. ever since i was a teenager, my version of a migraine was where my entire left side of my body went tingly and then numb (leg, arm, face, tongue, etc.), i couldn't see out of my left eye at all, couldn't speak properly, could not think of correct words, vomited excessively -- basically like a stroke. nothing helped them except for large amounts of sleep, around 12-18 hours, and even after i woke up, i would be in a confused fog for a day or two with severe head and eye pain before i was back to normal. i didn't know that these wasn't a regular migraine until i started surgical tech school and found out that a "normal" migraine was more of what i considered a regular headache. at that point, i was only getting them about once every 1-2 years, so i didn't bother going to a doctor because they weren't regularly occurring.
starting about a year ago, i began getting them again. at first, it was just one, but it was the old kind, where it was stroke-like with all the same symptoms. i had another one a month later, and then again three weeks later. i started seeing a neurologist who put me on topamax, but it hasn't been doing much good. over the course of about six months, i have been increased to taking 75mg both at night and in the morning, and i have a prescription for imitrex to take when i feel a headache coming on, but the imitrex hasn't helped at all, no matter what combination i take it (one now, then another two hours later, two now, then one later, two now then two later, etc).
beginning in march, i started getting just visual auras without a headache. these are frequently referred to as ocular migraines, and since i have these other migraines (basilar migraines), i am more prone to ocular migraines as well. my neurologist figured that is what they were, and because i wasn't experiencing pain with them, that was my diagnosis. at first, they were just pops of color/light and occasionally some flashing lights, with a shimmering cloud. i had a brain MRI, which came back clean with no brain lesions (which is somewhat unusual for someone who has had the severity of migraines i have from a young age, but i'm not complaining!).
however, in the past 2-3 months, my visual symptoms have increased to a very bothersome level.
