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Spectrum and migraine?

desikitteh

desikitteh

Well-Known Member
i'm interested to hear from other ASD people who suffer from migraine... how often you get them, how they feel etc... basically trying to understand the experiences i have as an aspie with chronic migraine.
 
I get them only occasionally, but it feels like a 3-wood to the head! It will last the whole day, & drive me batty!
 
As a teenager I had severe migraine attacks that lasted between a day up to three weeks solid. Not a week went by with at least one day of migraine. It got that bad that I got checked for brain tumours or other brain injuries with no results.
Since my move from Germany to Ireland in 2006 the migraines have become a lot less, now maybe once every two or three months and only up to three days where I have to stay in bed with the windows blacked out and no sounds around me.

My little theory about it is that I am not as stressed out by trying to fit in and 'teaching my brain' how to act 'normal'. Since getting diagnosed with 32 and embracing my aspie quirks the headaches are getting less and less.
 
I was diagnosed with migraines. At one point I had bad headaches and floaters in my vision. I had one once that went on for two weeks straight. I was told to take pain meds as soon as they start to prevent them from getting worse. Now I don't really get the headache part anymore, just the floaters. Doctor is not even sure the floaters I get now are from migraines. But I do feel I had migraines at one point in time. The best advice I can give is take something when they start and carry sunglasses in case the lights get to be too much.
 
I get tension headaches a lot sometimes if I'm really stressed it brings on a headache so bad it makes me literally sick,my brother who is also on the spectrum gets a lot of headaches I have to be careful and make sure he doesn't take too many headache tablets.
 
I get what I think is a "cluster migraine" when I get overly stressed out sometimes. 3 on a "bad month".

Makes my left eye feel like it's going to explode, very nauseous, sometimes feel like I'm gonna white-out.

I'm pretty sure it's not glaucoma, because I have yearly/bi-yearly eye exams.

And they are so random, don't happen every month, that I always forget to being it up when I go for the exam anyway. And the regular pressure tests come back normal.
 
AspiePie said:
I have no diabetes as far as I know but I have had it all my life as well as an intense imagination...
Click to expand...

Blood sugar varies, regardless of whether a
person is diabetic or not. And a person doesn't
need to have any imagination at all to experience
scintillating scotoma.

I have noticed that this happens to me, more often
in the summer, because if the weather is hot, I may
not eat much, my blood sugar drops, and this
contributes toward having a migraine aura.
 
I had a bad year of them last year, but so far this year has been pretty minimal. Blood tests ruled out many causes, my dr still wants me to go in for an EMR but since they have almost stopped completely I've been putting it off. I've started a new position in the company that is less stressful and in a quieter environment, and I've managed to eliminate nearly all possible environmental triggers from my daily routine. My guess is that one of those things was setting them off.
 
Do you get those migraines that start with being unable to process shapes and then change into a sharp headache that lasts for maybe half an hour and then disappear?
The visual disturbance is peculiar. I see shapes and colors but all of sudden I realize than I can't read, unless I trace the lines with my eyes very very closely. Same with people's faces, I know they are there but can't process them at all as if my brain can only deal with visuals in a tiny area in the center.
I don't get them often, maybe once a year, but it's pretty peculiar.
 
Yes I've had migraines since I was a child and visual disturbances are a regular feature of them, usually early in the process. Symptoms vary according to the attack but I also get nausea/vomiting, tinnitus, photophobia, numbness and sometimes hemiplegia. Mine usually last a day to a week.

I don't get them as often now as I used to - maybe a couple of times a year as opposed to every week or 2 in my teens.
 
I get migraines too, but no visual disturbances. I get quite an intense jabbing pain behind the eye accompanied by increased sensitivity to light and sound and nausea.
 
Yes. Sometimes.
I prefer these.
I experience visual disturbance but no discomfort/pain as such.

It's uncomfortable but nothing like the intensity of other migraine headaches.
 
I get the visual disturbance type without pain.
First time it happened I thought I was having a stroke.
The eye doctor says it is pretty common and scary.
Mine appears like a zig-zaggy streak of silver lightening that moves across my vision and when it
is in the center I can't see through it. It takes about half an hour for it to pass out of my vision field.
But, no pain or other ill effects.
Stress makes them happen more often too.

My doctor said to try Magnisium 400 mg per day tabs.
About half the people, she told me, it practically eliminates them from happening.
It seems to work for me. I rarely get them since I started the Magnesium.
 
Yup! First time I had one I thought it was retinal detachment so I freaked out completely. Now I know it will pass, even if I temporarily lose all vision in half of my eye.
 
Shenandoah said:
Do you get those migraines that start with being unable to process shapes and then change into a sharp headache that lasts for maybe half an hour and then disappear?
The visual disturbance is peculiar. I see shapes and colors but all of sudden I realize than I can't read, unless I trace the lines with my eyes very very closely. Same with people's faces, I know they are there but can't process them at all as if my brain can only deal with visuals in a tiny area in the center.
I don't get them often, maybe once a year, but it's pretty peculiar.
Click to expand...

My migraines usually occur in the left side of my vision. They sneak up on me. I usually start to notice when it becomes apparent my visual centre isn't functioning properly. I can still see with peripheral vision but when I try to focus on, say, something that's written down, I start to realise I'm only reading it with my right eye, while in the left there's this growing patch of weirdness.

The patch itself looks like boken windscreen glass. You know how that sort of glass beaks into thousands of tiny fragments separated by cracks, but it all stays together inside its frame? The way everything looks splintered through it? That's roughly what vision through the patch of weirdness looks like. It grows steadily, over the course of maybe an hour or so, until it covers the entirety of my left-side vision... then it's as if I pass through it somehow, as if passing through a short tunnel made of weirdness, and then normal vision is restored. As for the pain, it's sort of an optional extra. Sometimes there's a stabbing pain behind my left eye. Sometimes there's no pain at all. Always they leave me very tired. The initial effects are all over and done with inside a couple of hours, but the fatigue is a 24-hour thing.

Dunno if anyone else gets this, but that's a typical migraine for me.
 
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