The first time I had an ocular migraine, it terrified me. I didn’t know about them, and began having symptoms rather suddenly. The main symptom of an ocular migraine is a “squiggly lights in your field of vision” experience. You first see a small, enlarging blind spot called a scotoma in your main vision accompanied by bright, flashing or flickering lights known as scintillations. There may also be wavy or zig-zag lines surrounding the blind spot, which is what I have. The blind spot typically grows over a period of 8-10 minutes, until you can’t see something you look at straight on, and your peripheral vision is impaired by the lights.
Although most people do experience pain following this vision disturbing light show, approximately 16% of ocular migraine sufferers do not feel any pain at all. Those who do feel pain, however, suffer immensely. Imagine hearing your adt alarm go off at 20 times the normal volume, and having to feel it pounding through your head for an hour or more. That is a mild attempt to describe the pain.
Here is an informative video on the subject of these migraines that come with a sometimes frightening visual disturbance. It does a good job of showing you what one actually looks like in progress.
