This is what my migraine looks like

I haven't had a proper migraine for quite a while, so it was quite a surprise to wake up and not be able to see properly.

When I get a migraine I often get problems with vision. My digestive tract paralyses partially and my senses are heightened. Bright light hurts, and often even the weakest of lights hurts. I get sick from smells and I can't block out background sounds, like I normally can (so just one sound at a time, please.) My speech is blurred and I'm very sleepy. I also need to avoid things touching me slightly, although a proper touch is OK. I mostly avoid the massive headaches, thanks to my vision problem. (The headache starts a half an hour after the vision problems start. So if I have some paracetamol as soon as I get the funny vision, there's time for the medicine to travel around my system before the headache hits.)

I was drawing some pictures for decoupage the other day. Funnily enough, I noticed I had drawn something that looks exactly like a migraine vision. You can see there are several snowmen standing next to eachother. Look at the one on the right closely, the only one that's completed. Don't look directly at the others, just the complete one. This is how I see a row of completed snowmen when I have a migraine. Some details just somehow disappear. The brain gets rid of some details and replaces some parts of the drawing with the surrounding colour, in this case white. Unfortunately, the blank part is often smack in the middle of my vision. In that case I can't see much at all.

I often get first signs of a migraine long before the first vision problems. One of my classic early signs is being afraid in the passenger seat of a car. It's difficult to respond to the movement of the car in a migraine, and I think Heikki should start breaking, turning, speeding etc. much sooner than he does. I don't know if I should put this down to my reaction times being slower in a migraine, or my brain just being too active.

Because my brain doesn't function normally during a migraine attack, I don't always notice the symptoms early on. Heikki mostly spots my migraines before me. If I'm in doubt, I look at my hand: If I don't see all of my fingers, I definitely have a migraine.