Monday, February 27, 2006

Me and My Scintillating Scotoma

Ha ha! Sounds funny!

"Scintillating Scotoma." Funny funny funny!

Not.

Not funny when, from out of nowhere, it seems like you just had a brief glimpse of the sun and you're not even outside.

Not funny when the brightly greenish blind spot spawns offspring that dance and fuse while changing colors at a dazzlingly breakneck pace.

Not funny when the blind spot and it's children form a glittering line of visual obscurity across your field of vision.

Not funny when the line appears to be performing a complex Morris dance, making it impossible to focus on anything, even on the ground as you try to walk or on your hands as your try to type.

Not funny.

At all.

Thank goodness the scintillating scotoma only performs its not-funny act for about a half an hour, and seems to listen to the goddess Ibuprofen when she orders it and its dancing children to "begone"!

Thank goodness the only perceptible sequelae of the scintillating scotoma is a general mental muzziness and a deep desire to take a nap.

Thank goodness the not-funny is, in all probability, NOT something MORE not funny, like a stroke or tumor or some other evil brain thing.

Thank goodness it's not being followed by the typical migraine that many people with their own unfunny scintillating scotomas get.

Me and my scintillating scotoma.

Not funny.

Not today.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow...never heard of this one. Feeling better?

tiff said...

Hey - yup - all better. That's the weird thing, I'm finding out, about these things. They come and go with no warning. For some it's a prequel to a migraine, for others is merely a momentary break for the everyday. FOrortunately, I seem to be in the latter group - a slight tired headache was the only follow-on.

But.So.Not.Funny.

tiff said...

Yowza! Again with the flipping typos!

rennratt said...

Do you lose sight completely in one eye, or does it simply fuzz out and get spotty?

Have you had this type of thing for long?

I hope that you feel better!

tiff said...

Detailed info on the SS - I don't lose ALL my sight, as a general rule. That happened once, years ago, and I almost did the Fred Sanford-ish chest clutching over it. Mostly, the vision gets spotty, like after standing up too quickly, and then builds from there. You can actually track it going across your field of vision, and if you close your eyes it can be rather spectacular. However, if you're trying to do something that requires binocular vision or the ability to focus, you're SOL for a while.
I've learned it's a benign condition and have heard there's nothing much to be done about it, but I still have an appointment with a neurologist to spot-check my brain (ha!)
So yes, all better now!

Suzanne said...

Benign condition? Sounds pretty scary anyway. How long has this affected you? How often does it happen?

Yikes. Just yikes.

Suzanne

Anonymous said...

"You can actually track it going across your field of vision, and if you close your eyes it can be rather spectacular."

Perhaps you could have some fun with it and put on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon?

Seriously, though--this sounds just awful. I had to look it up in my Stedman's. Scotoma is just a page over from scrotum.

Hope you're feeling better today.

tiff said...

Kim - I think I would rather have had to deal with a scrotum for half an hour than the scotoma. Wonder if I can trade next time? ;>

Anonymous said...

I've had SS about 4 times since my migraines stopped. Have to believe there's a correlation between the 2 somehow, since everything except the actual "ache" is identical. Frequency, intenstiy, symptoms... all of it. The only difference now is that my brain shuts down and I can't think, read or speak during the episode.
Frustrating as hell with the vision loss and the mental paralysis, but thankfully, the SS is much more short-lived than my previous migraines.

Anonymous said...

Spike - Yeah, I can take the SS and prodrome as long as the headache doesn't follow.