UHAM042

WHAT DO TH EY FEEL LIKE? * 25

Migraine with aura

Some people think they have influenza when they have a bad cold. Similarly, there are some indmduals who claim that they have a migraine when it is simply a bad headache. Often, such people have never really experienced a true migraine. As can be seen from these stories, migraines involve lots of signs and symptoms which mean that they are generally much worse than a common headache.

Walter’s story demonstrates the milder side of migraines. As you can see, he is lucky in that they seem to be well controlled and occur ąuite rarely. He is also fortunate because he is actually a psychologist, and therefore had books available from which he could find out about his condition, which no doubt helped him to put things into perspective. Of course, reading this book might provide that kind of reassurance for you, and there is a wealth of information out there if you know where to look. Later in this book there are pointers to help you to track down good information.

^lo'°l have had migraines sińce childhood. I distinctly recall standing in a school dinner queue at about the age of 14- and experiencing the char-acteristic multicoloured snaking pattern of light slowly but surely arcing across the centre of my vision, eventually filling one whole haLf of my visuaL field. I thought it was odd, but never got scared asthese things had happened many times before. After the visual disturbance there would usually be a period of about 30 minutes before a bad headache would kick in. It was not u nti U was about 22 that I ca me to understand that this was a classic migraine. I had been writing a paper at a Computer and suddenly noticed that some of the words had 'disappeared'. Gradually the partial blindness got worse and the snaking pattern seemed to be the cause. I went and found a copy of the Oxford Companion to the Mindand looked up migraine. I found a perfect description of my experiences over the years. It also noted that the headache tended to kick in about 30 minutes after the visual disturbance, so I quickly took two paracetamol and managed to avoid the worst of the headache. These days I always do that and man-age to keep the worst of it at bay. I have also noticed that my breathing appears to be 'strangę' - gently laboured if that makes anysense - when I have a migraine. Breathing morę slowly seems to help. Migraines are for me not a freguent thing - perhaps two or three a year.^JJ

Walter, 31