Tuesday, July 23, 2013

halted aura

today in the lab, around noon, started to get really light sensitive, felt very unsteady, a little nauseated. for the past couple of days kept seeing weird flashes of blue light, like lens flares in the j.j. abrams jokes. also, i've noticed the eye crank lines more than usual in recent days, of course when making extreme eye movements, but not really extreme. i feel like the visibility of those phosphenes is linked to the migraines.

as the day went on, it (the discomfort) basically got better. had a coffee around 4, after that i don't remember being bothered so much, just had half the lights off in my office.

then, about 7:15, wrapping up my files, and notice it's hard to see; then discover a fairly well-developed scotoma in the left field, less than 5 degrees out. for whatever reason i hadn't noticed it up to that point - i don't remember exactly what i'd been doing for the few minutes previous, probably reading something, which is when i usually notice.

so i got out my tracking program and had some problems - one problem was that the new target i had set up was just too phosphene-like. it was a dumb idea, flickers too much, too noisy. better to just have a slow-counter-phasing block like a perimetry target. even when i could find the aura, it was hard to set the target. which leads to the second problem: the scotoma was weak. i think that even when i did find it, the target shone through, which i've never seen before. usually the scotoma is absolute, and i did find some times/places where it seems the target (or my finger) really were invisible; but, it also seemed that i could pass the target over what felt like a scotoma region, and its contrast would seem to attenuate, but it wouldn't disappear.

i got a couple of 1-2 minute recordings, breaking in between, and then the aura evaporated. it seemed normal in its geometry, if faint, barely ever saw the fortification spectrum, but at some point - i'd say 15 minutes into its normal course, barely 10-20 degrees out, it just disappeared and didn't come back. i think i stopped the second recording around the time it disintegrated, so i have a record of where it was. it was weak and small from the start, so the CSD wave must have just disintegrated. very strange. for a while after, a few minutes, i had a clear feeling of visual disorganization in the left field, but nothing obvious, nothing i could really pin down, and certainly no scotoma.

no headache whatsoever - there was a slight headache in the afternoon, right side, normal place, but transient and weak, i gave it a 0.5.

came home and had dinner, bit of a weird feeling but nothing significant. weird.

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