People have always said that migraine headaches are similar to very bad headaches, but how would you actually differentiate just a very bad headache from a migraine headache? For someone who doesn't know what a migraine is, they would just think their migraine is just a very bad headache (or in my case, something else).
I've just realized that I've had at least 2, possibly 3 migraine headaches in my lifetime, with the most recent being this week. I just never realized they were migraines. I've always just attributed the symptoms to food-poisoning.
I can still recall my first possible episode. I say "possible episode" because I can't be sure whether it was a migraine headache or food-poisoning, although I am leaning towards a migraine headache now. On the particular night of the first episode, I had cooked some thinly sliced steak for dinner. I remember I had only cooked each side for a few (2 or 3) minutes since it was so thinly sliced. After having eaten it, I felt really sick and nauseous. At some point, I started to experience some visual weirdness. After some time, I threw up, the visual weirdness went away and I felt better. I actually don't remember if I had a headache or not, but I do distinctly remember the visual weirdness (since it was the first one I ever had). At that point, I just assumed it was food poisoning since the steak may not have been cooked thoroughly. Also, I just assumed the visual weirdness was due to my body reacting to some poisons given off by the bacteria in the bad steak, similar to how someone would react to poisonous mushrooms (hallucinations).
Since then, anytime I've had the visual weirdness, I just assumed it was food poisoning. This past week, I had experienced the visual weirdness right before lunch time. I usually don't eat anything before lunch, and so my stomach was empty. I did feel nauseous and the symptoms lined up with how I felt when I experienced my previous visual weirdness. I knew things weren't going to be good, so I left work (took a sick day) and went home. When I got home, I vomited whatever was in my stomach (mainly water) and went to bed. I eventually woke up around 6pm and felt much better.
For the next few days, the food-poisoning explanation just didn't sit well with me, but I just didn't know what else it could be. It wasn't until yesterday that I had an epiphany, connecting my experiences to migraines (At some point in the past, I must've read that migraine headaches could affect the visual senses). I looked up migraines in Wikipedia, and lo and behold, it perfectly matched up with what I experienced, including the nausea and visual weirdness.
According to wikipedia, the visual weirdness I experienced is actually called an aura. Auras are associated with migraines, which is why I'm sure what I experienced this week is a migraine and why I think my first episode was a migraine and not food-poisoning. In the past, I always concentrated more on the nausea and aura when diagnosing what I had. I never really even considered the headache part. It's difficult to describe the aura, but after searching the web, I found a
link which has a pretty good rendition of what I experience with my aura. As you can see, auras are very distinctive, which is why I can remember how many times I've experienced them (and hence the number of definite migraines I've had)
Now knowing what migraines are, I would have to say mine are beyond just bad headaches. The headache part is bad enough that I have to sleep it off since there's no point in staying awake with it.
