Any teachers or professors out there?

I am a professor at a liberal arts college and I get 'silent' or visual migraines that impair my vision. Yesterday, I was fortunate
that my migraine began after my lecture and not during. With the visual impairment, I can't read properly but feel no
headache symptoms. This becomes very challenging when dealing with students who hand you forms to sign, not to mention
reading my powerpoint lectures. So far, I have never had a migraine during lecture but am terrified of it! How have
other teachers/educators managed the onset of a migraine during class?

Hi Firled,

I'm a professor, too. I have more tension-type headaches, so I don't get the visual auras you do. Fortunately for me, adrenaline usually kicks in and I can push the headache into the background when I need to for a class, major deadline, etc. Afterwards, however, I pay for it with considerably increased pain levels.

For me, the challenge of academia and headaches is getting all the reading and writing done --things that require lots of concentration but typically don't have a deadline set in stone. I can almost always rally for a deadline, but getting the day to day stuff done is my biggest challenge.

Smurfy -- if you read Firled's post, you'll see s/he is not asking for medical advice, but coping strategies. I think this is exactly the purpose of forums such as this.

Best of luck, Firled. I do agree with Smurfy about seeing a doctor, preferably a headache specialist. They may well have preventives that will work on your silent migraines.

Firled said...
I am a professor at a liberal arts college and I get 'silent' or visual migraines that impair my vision. Yesterday, I was fortunate that my migraine began after my lecture and not during. With the visual impairment, I can't read properly but feel no headache symptoms. This becomes very challenging when dealing with students who hand you forms to sign, not to mention reading my powerpoint lectures. So far, I have never had a migraine during lecture but am terrified of it! How have other teachers/educators managed the onset of a migraine during class?

Hi Firled,

First of all, this is technically a migraine, without the pain. This is according to my ophthalmologist. Yes, the vision disturbances are referred to as a migraine aura, but it's still part of a migraine, just as the pain is part of a migraine. You can have a migraine with pain, a migraine with aura, or a migraine with both. I've had all of the above.

I taught college-level physics and math for 12 years. This is the first spring semester I have not taught a class. I had to turn down my spring assignment because of severe health problems, so maybe I'm not the best to advise you on coping mechanisms, but I do suffer from vision issues, neurological problems: vertical double vision and blurry vision that gets better or worse unpredictably.

Here are my tricks, such as they are....before class I would come up with an in-class assignment to give them if I became too ill to continue lecturing. Also, I would give them "extra credit" for working out problems on the board, for example when I returned their exams and I was having trouble reading the tests or having vertigo or whatever.

Depending on what you teach, these may or may not work for you.

Best wishes,
JoAnn

I wouls say have cocodamol, water, snack, hand fan to hand always and tell them, maybe employers need to be aware i found some good employer advice stuff on the web, people with headaches calling it migraine will not help us will they?