UHAM046

WHAT DO TH EY FEEL LIKE? * 29

to work until they have built up; this tends to be around the time the pain is dimimshing anyway.

I know that many people find their migraines triggered by things such as chocolate, stress, or menstruation in the case of many women, but these have never been tnggers for me. I do feeL that, earlier on, my migraines were down to too much sleep, but now I believe that they are due mainly to light. My eyes have always been very sensitive to light; I wear sunglasses almost aLL of the time, even in Winter and at dawn and dusk. Having spoken to my optician about it she confirmed that I had high light sensitivity that could lead to headaches.^??

Charlotte, 23

Some migraines can alter your senses and temporarily take away your speech or vision, and it can be ąuite frightening when you do not know what is happening to you. It is ąuite natural to panie, especially when something seemingly dramatic happens, as shown in the foliowing account.

-¹'Typically, the first sign of an impending migraine is that printed text suddenly shimmers before my eyes, and it becomes very effortful to work out what a particular word says. This can be a brief experience, but it's a warning sign not to carry on reading. There are slight disturbances on the periphery of vision, but not re a lly the 'aura' that is sometimes described. Morę typ i ca lly, the edges of vision become slightly 'fogged', and there can be the impression of faint objects floating through my field of vision. This produces the strange compulsion to follow them by moving my head. This can produce a similar effect to a dog chasing its taił. Speech production, too, can suffer, and I can become unable to produce coherent speech. Fortunately, the severity of this declined with time, and has now largely disappeared. A numbness in my right hand usually occurs as well. It's difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't had a migraine just how painful it is. It is much morę of a 'pa i n in the head' than a 'bad headache'. The pain is constant and throbbing and can produce nausea although, agam, this has greatly reduced over the years.

The only thing to do is to take some painkillers and lie down in a very dark, very quiet place and try not to think about anything. The headache can continuefor a couple of hours during which it is impossible to sleep; a migraine wou Id be much morę tolerabie if one was able to sleep through