New username

I've just requested that my LJ username be changed from fringefaan to randy_byers. All my Friends links should be automatically updated, from what they say. Do not be alarmed. I gotta be me. I don't know how long it will take for the change to be effected.

Ocular migraine?

I had a strange episode this morning. I was in an edgy, stressy mood to begin with. A little over an hour after I got to work I suddenly found I couldn't read my computer screen anymore. There was some kind of distortion in my visual field that wasn't allowing me to focus on the words. I sat looking out the window for a bit, but that didn't help. I decided to go for a walk and get some coffee. When I got outside, I noticed that I was having the same problem reading faces as I was having with words. I couldn't focus on faces if I looked at them directly. They looked fragmentary.

After I got my cup of coffee, I started walking around the block. Suddenly I started feeling very woozy and weird, like I was on drugs. I wondered if I was having a stroke, but I couldn't detect any symptoms of speech loss or numbness or tingling. It was just this strangely detached, woozy feeling. Ambient sound seemed very aggressive. I hurried back to the office, thinking I was going to have to ask to be taken to the ER. However, by the time I got back to the office, the feeling was receding. I sat down at my desk, and I continued to feel better. Before long I was feeling tired and vaguely woozy, but I could read my computer screen just fine. Furthermore the stressy feeling had gone away. I felt more peaceful.

It then occurred to me that I'd heard of migraines that resulted in distorted vision but no actual headache. Some googling got me to "ocular migraine", and some of the symptoms described seemed similar to what I'd experienced. "Though they can be frightening, ocular migraines typically are harmless and self-resolve without medication within 20 to 30 minutes." Whatever hit me lasted for about 20-25 minutes.

I don't know for sure that that's what it actually was, but one of the things that jumped out at me in a couple of articles was that a possible trigger for ocular migraines is glaring or flashing light. Just before my episode, the sun had broken through the clouds and flared off the chrome clock sitting under my computer screen. The light flared directly into my eyes, and it was so painful that I actually growled, "Fuck!" as I turned to close the Venetian blinds. As the first wave of visual distortion hit me a minute or two later, I thought my eyes were still blinded by the glare off the clock. It was only after another minute or two of not being able to focus my eyes that I began to wonder if something else was wrong with me.

I've never experienced anything like that before in my life. I don't think there's a lot of history of migraines in my family, although I vaguely think my grandmother suffered from them. Sure hope this isn't a harbinger of things to come.