What Are Ocular Migraines?

There was no warning on the day I had my first ocular migraine. I didn't know what it was and there was no pain. It was as if I had looked directly into a light and then looked away; I was seeing a spot in my right eye. It took up the upper right hand corner of anything I saw with that eye, and it was flashing. I thought perhaps I had looked into the light without realizing it, but I was wrong.

Twenty minutes into the ocular migraine, closer to 30, the light was still flashing in my eye. It was more like a blind spot that would not go away. I closed my eyes for a few minutes and reopened them to see the spot was still there. When the spot finally did stop flashing, I had a dull aching feeling, as though my eye was strained. The vision seemed dim in that eye, as if a cloud was passing by during an otherwise bright and sunny day. I thought the incident had passed when the blind spot came back, larger and flashier than before. Scared, and starting to think I was going blind, I told my manager I was going home for the day. My boyfriend came to the office to follow me as I drove home, and I called the eye doctor.

After describing my symptoms, the optometrist told me it sounded like I had an ocular migraine. He asked if I had a headache afterwards; I was, in fact, experiencing the sharp headache on the opposite side of my head as I spoke to him. Because I had two incidents in a row, he asked me to visit the office for a checkup and to make sure there was no damage to my eye or underlying cause. I had never heard of an ocular migraine before that day, and this is what I learned:

An ocular migraine is not anything like your typical "migraine" headache. An ocular migraine affects only one eye, and after your vision is impacted a normal headache is likely to follow. Those of you familiar with regular "migraines" may have experienced an aura in your vision right before your headache strikes - this affects both eyes and is not a symptom of an ocular migraine.