Painless migraines, anyone?

WE were talking here about predrome and the usual signs that migriane is coming: confusion, yawning, sleepiness, clumsiness and others, but this also reminded me that occasionally I also get painless migraines.

I start a predrome with all the symptms but pain never comes, instead I have the predrome symptoms for about 2/3 days. I also get quite depressed and unhappy for no reason, with feeling of hopelesness, which is not like me.
It can all be quite distressing but I do not get usual migraine pain.
I suppose I should be happy, but I never feel grateful when it happens.

I wonder, if any other people get the painless migraines as well, and what might be causing them.

I get a similar sort of thing. When this happens to me I usually have either an intense pulsing in the location that my head always hurts (my pain is always in the same place on the same side and never varies), or a tingling/vibrating sort of feeling there. Neither of the feelings are painful, but they are rather distressing to me. I usually have a pretty intense prodrome (my prodromes always last hours at a time) and these odd feelings follow instead of a migraine.

mini, ive just come out of a 3 day pain free one and get them regularly, apparently exactly the same goes on in the brain except the pain side and you have to allow yourself to realise youre still in a migraine. they are horrible and as my neuro said they are as disabling as a pain migraine.

In many ways, I find them even more disabling than a pain migraine (except for the most painful migraines). Sometimes I can get involved with something and distract myself from the pain of lesser migraines. The neurological symptoms of these painless migraines, however, are impossible to ignore. When I get them, I absolutely have to lie down until they pass.

I have basilar migraines and they consist of mainly aura symptoms - pain is not always present. My major symptom is loss of or lowered consciousness. Other symptoms include numbness, inability to speak, inability to think clearly, confusion, strong aversion to light and sound. When one starts I have to lay down and block out as much outside stimuli as possible and then I just slowly fade out - maybe for 20 minutes or as long as an hour. If I have pain it is more like the pain of occipital neuralgia with pain and pressure behind my eyes, pain at the back of my head and extreme scalp pain. Once the aura symptoms abate I am totally exhausted and it may take me hours before I have the strength to move off the couch! Leslie

This is most interesting - I forgot to add some other symptoms like sensitivity to light and sound like JM, and that strange pulsating sensation which is scary soeically at night when I can actually "hear" my blood flowing "Shuuuush, Shuuuush" sort of thing, most unpleasant.
I think I also understang why we all find it so distressing, Jwar - I think that painless migraine affects us mentally to a great degree, much more so then the usual migraine.
At times I feel as if I am going insane, I do not know what is going on feeling as if I lost control of my faculties. This is scary.
I am so glad Dawn ,that this bout is over for you, we need our faculties to last thorugh the Xmas.
Thanks for all your you responses.

About 1/2 of my migraines are painless, with nausea, dizzyness, numbness and throbbing pressure on one side of my head. Sometimes the pressure is very intense, but it doesn't hurt.

But when I have these pain free migraines, I've noticed that the aura symptoms usually last much longer, sometime for a full day. I'd almost rather have pain that the visual distortion, confusion, trouble walking and talking stuff. Plus I get the dizzyness, numbness and nausea at the same time as the aura symptoms. So I'm even more disabled than with a regular migraine.

However, i recently totally lost my vision in both eyes for the first time. The vision lost only lasted about 30 minutes, but was followed by nothing more than nausea, dizzyness and head pressure. So that was a very short aura followed by a pain free migraine.

Loosing your vision must have been terribly scary for you CQ, as well as all the other neurological symptoms - our brain is going wild, firing all the wrong signals and driving as mad. I so wish there was a proper cure, something that would re-wire the system for us once and for all.
I believe that for the next generation, they will be able to find out, and resolve the enigma that is migraine.

Actually, I wasn't scared at all. I was intrigued. Pretty odd. Normally I just get blurred vision. Nothing like this.

When it started I was so busy working I didn't pay attention to it until I realized I was reading sideways to see around the scotoma. I realized the green "flashbulb" afterimage I had half noticed in the center of my field of view, which I thought was from looking at a light bulb or something, was a spreading scotoma.

Then I was fascinated by the colorful scintillating fortifications as the scotoma spread across my vision. 3D jagged patterns made up of vivid pastels. Quite pretty. I recognized the pattern as a migraine aura from artwork. Also, I could see it with my eyes closed so I knew it was in my brain and not my eye.

I very calmly called my wife and said I might need to go to the ER, just in case in was a stroke. But I was almost positive it was a migraine aura.

The pattern spread out of my field of view and left a grey nothingness.

I had to be helped out of my building at that point because I couldn't see anything. But by the time my wife showed up it was just starting to lift so I went home and waited it out, mostly since I thought a massive migraine must be on the way. But the migraine was fairly mild and only lasted maybe 4 hours.

I actually found the whole thing really interesting. I looked at migraine aura artwork for a few days, looking for similar images.

-Peter

I was just diagnosed in November with atypical migraine - migraine without the headache. I have been a migraine sufferer since 14 and up until about 10 years ago had "normal" migraine with headache. Now I get all the neurological symptoms which freak me out - numbiness, tingling, trouble swallowing, strong phantom odors - the vertigo and ear ringing is new for me. It's become quite dibilitating these past few months and have been missing a lot of work. I go for an MRI on Jan 8 to rule out anything else. The neurologist is treating me with 20 mg of Elavil nightly until we know exactly what's going on from the MRI (hopefully).

I understand how you feel and trying to explain to people the whole situation is difficult as they "dont get it". It's a horrible disease.

Thank you very much for your feedback - it is amazing how difficult it is to explain all this, specially when at the time, we find it difficult to talk and to concnetrate.
I am so glad that you all wrote since we can "compare the notes" and it is a great comfort to know, that we all feel the same, and in this way we have confirmation that all this is a prt of the same disease.

I agree Tamsha that it is a good idea to have MRI whenever our symptoms change in sny significant way.
Just to be on safe side. Let us know the result.