I had been swimming with a friend, Ronald Rose, to the Walsall swimming baths one Saturday. I must have been about fifteen years old. We were on the number 5 bus going home towards Sankeys Corner, Chase Terrace, when I started to loose certain parts of my vision, I was getting blind spots, auras.
Once off the bus, I started to feel very strange, detached from the real world, my depth of field was not correct, when I went to touch something, I missed it, the item was further away.
I started to get “pins and needles” or tingling sensations in my hands, my tongue, spreading around my whole body.
I got to my Uncle Jack’s house, and I slumped down in his back yard. Poor man he did not know what to do.
What was happening to me?
My father was sent for, as I was now complaining of severe pains in my head, I wanted to pull one of my eyes out, as it seemed someone was stabbing me with daggers.
My father arrived in a big dirty coal lorry, ready to make its’ next delivery, and I was loaded aboard to be taken home, my colour gray turning to green, and the doctor called.
By this time I had emptied my insides, evacuating top and bottom, and all I wanted to do was to sleep, but still in great pain, especially the eyes.
The doctor made many tests as friends and relatives gathered to see what was happening to me, to offer support to my mother and father.
Thankfully, it was nothing more than migraine, a disease that strikes millions of people around the world (300 million, Scientific American, August 2008).
The whole incident lasted a few hours, and the effects of feeling as if I had just gotten over the flu, drained, weak, lifeless, lasted about a day.
I was the start of the time in my life which led to me having a migraine? attack nearly every week, on a Thursday. A period which was to last a number of years, but was to cease, to only a very infrequent attack.
But what causes migraines? Have they found the answers to migraines?