Posted 11/21/2010 10:09 PM (GMT 0)
The following was copied from a post made on this website back in 2005 by PaulR. Amazingly, the author has described down to the most minute detail the episodes that I have been having for the past several years. Nowhere whatsoever does his description of his symptoms deviate from from what happens to me. Considering the fact that auras, while a common phenomenon, seem to occur through processes that are as yet undetermined, I'm curious as to how two different people can experience the exact symptoms down to the tee. I'm not a neurologist, but nevertheless I find the exact similarities between this person's descriptions and my experiences to be very interesting.
Anyway, here is PaulR's description. This is exactly what I experience:
"The aura is difficult to describe. Mine have all been visually similar, identical for both eyes, and sometimes I get a mild dull ache in the back of my head near the end of the aura, lasting maybe 1/2 hour. All of the auras start out as a blanked out place just to the left and below the point I am trying to focus on. The blanked out area is medium gray. On my computer desktop, the icon I focus on is just not there, but all the icons around it are visible and perfectly readable. Within maybe 5 minutes, the blanked-out area has about trippled in size, but now has some features. The main feature is a bright white line, kind of C shaped. The top of the C is kind of horizontal and the left side is kind of vertical, and the bottom is kind of horizontal. The whole line of the C is very crooked - kind of jagged all along its length, something like lightning, or a sawtooth wave. The crookedness seems to constantly be changing, and but I can't see what exactly is changing. The top and left are well defined and the bottom is less-well defined. The blanked out area is the area close to the C-shaped line. Over a period of about 1/2 hour, the C expands and becomes less well defined, until it is out of my field of vision. Since the blanked out area is a narrow area near the line making up the C, about 10 to 15 minutes after the start, the icon I focus on is perfectly visible and the jagged C is around it and the icons outside the C are perfectly visible. "