u/oreokitkatz

for the past 9 months i've been suffering from what i now know to be hemiplegic migraines several times a week, causing pretty bad near-constant weakness in my right leg. i've been in so much pain and i never would've considered that a migraine could also cause you to lose strength on one side of your body, lose control of your speech and make you feel so sick all the time!! they've been getting worse and worse over the past 9 months, and the stress from the symptoms getting worse triggered more migraines, which created this horrible cycle until it got to the point i was almost constantly experiencing symptoms. i also started experiencing a loss of strength and pins and needles in my right arm a few days ago, which REALLY freaked me out and is what pushed me to try to advocate for myself again.

i thought it'd be hopeless and they'd just send me home telling me that nothing's wrong, but after a visit to a&e the other day because i thought i was having a stroke, they diagnosed me with hemiplegic migraines!! to my surprise, my doctor [who previously dismissed the symptoms] also agrees with their assessment and he's trying out different meds for me starting today!! i'm honestly a little shocked that they actually found something after months of people around me insisting it was psychosomatic, i really thought that i was doomed to feel like that forever 😭 for the first time in 9 months, i'm actually optimistic about my health and very excited to get back to living life again!!

sorry for the long post, i just didn't wanna annoy anyone i know further with my ramblings and i needed to get it down somewhere... i'm feeling a lot of conflicting emotions right now, but optimism is the one i'm choosing to focus on right now ^_^

i've never had the ability to visualise on command, for as long as i can remember it's been this way. however, a few weeks ago, i saw something for the first time when i closed my eyes; it was a person, and it was detailed enough for me to make their face out and the scenery [i honest to god cried over it]. the first occurrence of this was definitely the most detailed and it honestly had me thinking i was cured at the time lmao, it was so crisp and vivid compared to the nothingness i usually saw there

i thought nothing of it once i woke up not being able to visualise [since i was a little sleep deprived when this first visualisation happened], but a few weeks later i saw myself laying somewhere that wasn't my bed when i closed my eyes. i was surrounded by people walking by my bed, but it was hard to make anything out and the second i opened and closed my eyes again it was gone 😭 there's one other instance of this visualisation happening a few days ago, whilst i was listening to music, but prior to the first random episode of visualisation, the only other time i'd been able to see something in my mind's eye was during an episode of delirium

i still can't visualise 99% of the time. i didn't have to hold focus to see it with my eyes shut, and thinking about looking at other stuff didn't change the images in my head. has anything like this happened to anyone else?