Optical Migraines?! Symptoms changed Drastically!!!! ADVICE PLEASE

[Serenity8513]

When I was about 12 years old I went with my Family to Six Flags. We had been on a few Roller coasters nothing too nerveracking. Everything was going fine untill I came out of the Tide Pool in the Water Park. I immediately noticed that something was wrong with my vision. It had reduced to almost nothing in both eyes. I had severe tunnel vision and kinda freaked out about it. my mother told me it was nothing. I guess she thought I was making it up or that something was just in my eyes. we continued through the park.. about 15 minutes later my vision was still weird but my right hand had gone numb. this is was worried my mother. she knew I couldn't have been leaning on it or anything because we were walking around the whole time. About 5-8 minutes later the feeling started to come back into my hand, but as the feeling in my right hand came back... the feeling in my left hand started to go away. I told her again. she told me to sit down in the shade and she went to get some water for me. When she came back I tried to tell her " I want to go to the Doctor" but I had lost feeling in my tongue by this point and it came out garbled and undistiguishable. about 15 minutes after that all feeling came back and I felt normal except for a slight headache and slightly larger than normal blind spots. after we got home I told her I didn't want to go to the doctor I just wanted to go to sleep. so we decided that if it started happening again then we would go immediately. I didn't have another episode for 2 years. I was at church and our class had just started when I noticed my vision had changed so I went home and the symptoms followed the path that they did before. since it was sunday I had to wait untill monday to go to the doctor. he wasn't able to tell me much except that a few of the signs sounded like optical migraines. so that was the end of that. I continued to get them about once a year almost on an annual occurance. the same time of year same weather type it was always sunny blue skies and nice weather something you would want to be outside for. I had gotten a total of about 5 of them and since hadn't had one for 3-4 years. I'm now 22 years old and just 3 days ago woke up with an unbelievable headache (which was not how the others started) however I did notice that my vision had changed and told myself not to worry it will only last a little while and go away... NOPE. I tried going back to sleep to see if I could sleep it off, didn't work. Advil... didn't work. Shower... Didn't work. I was trying anything and everything that I could to try to relieve any pain that I could and nothing helped. my vision got worse untill it had been reduced to only blur. kinda like when you wake up and you have that goopy stuff over your eye and it's all blurry. I could only distiguish light and dark. a little panic hit me at this point because it had been close to an hour and a half and my hand had not started going numb yet. I was waiting for this migraine or whatever it is to take the course that it had before, and it wasn't. I started throwing up uncontrolably, (which was totally new for me). about 3 hours after it started my hand went numb at that point i knew it was like it was before.. it was just taking longer. another 3 hours and my right hand started coming back and my left hand was loosing feeling. my vision was still nothing but a blur. and I was still throwing up. about 3 hours after that my tongue went numb and I figured my speech would be garbled again. so I talked to myself and said "it will pass, it will pass." but it was undistinguishable like the other times. it was worse than it had been before just like the rest of the symptoms instead of my speech sounding like it was just muffled and jumbled... this time there were sounds and noises like I wasn't trying to say "it will pass" at all. each time that I tried to repeat "it will pass" it sounded totally different from the last time. I don't know how long that lasted all I know is that after that I stopped trying to speak right because even though I knew it would go away ( or at this point Hoped it would) it was so different from the other times that it was scaring me with just that one symptom alone. I tried to talk periodically to see if it had gone away, and I was still throwing up. when it finally did, my vision was still so bad that I could only tell light from dark. when my vision had come back enough for me to see, I looked at the clock and realised that I woke up around 7am and it was now 9pm. It had been 14 Hours! My head was still hurting with no signs of subsiding even for a moment. My boyfriend had come and he told his mother what was wrong she gave me a half of her husbands headache pill ( it's for headaches and nausea) and it took the sharp edge off the pain. and I stopped throwing up. about an hour later she gave me the other half and told me slowly try to eat. she had gotten me 10 chicken nuggets from mcdonalds so that she could easily see how much I had eatten. before I couldn't keep anything down... now I kept a whole meal down. after that I felt alot better. but the pain was still terrible and if I coughed, or moved, hech even breathed to heavy it felt like I was right back at square one. the headache it self lasted 3 days. Even now if I cough I can still feel it slightly. I wanted to know if enough of these symptoms match Optical Migraines to safely call it one like the doctor did. or because of the recent changes the possibility of it being something more serious. I'm sorry if there is any unneeded information here but I figured if I put down everything then I wouldn't forget to put down something important.
                                                                                         SERENITY

[dc3011]

My 18-year-old daughter just experienced these EXACT symptoms over the weekend.  We rushed to the ER, where they did a CT scan, ultrasound (neck), MRI, and drew about 20 vials of blood.  All tests (with the exception of a few blood tests which won't be back for a couple of weeks) were clear.  They finally concluded the same thing:  migraines.  She has never had a migraine before this experience!  I still wonder if this could truly be what it is.  Did you ever go back and have any tests done?  If so, what was the outcome?  It's so frustrating watching your child go through something like this, and you can't do anything about it!  It is a VERY SCARY thing to go through!

[Vanessa Lacuesta]

Hi,

Migraine headaches are usually given as a diagnosis once all other possible conditions have been ruled out.Have you been thoroughly tested and evaluated by a neurologist?

A cranial CT scan, an EEG, tests for your coagulation factor levels to exclude any bleeding disorders , evaluation of your complete blood count and thyroid hormone levels will be able to help. I also suggest that a  2D Echo of the heart and carotid duplex scan of the neck vessels and peripheral vessels may be performed.

Once other conditions such as eye problems,hormonal imbalance and a possible seizure disorder have been ruled out then a primary differential of a migraine headache may be given.If this is a migraine, this fits the picture of a complex migraine such as basilar migraine.