length of aura's

Do you know the average length of the aura's you experience? I estimate mine to be about 15-20 min but had one the other night that lasted an hour. I was getting frightened. I finally put ice pack on my head & a heating pad on my abdomen, don't know if that helped but aura finally stopped. If I lived near a hospital that is one time I would have gone to the ER. Thanks.

My auras normally last 10 or 15 minutes. They consist of flashing zig zag lights and can make it difficult to see but thankfully they are rather infrequent. Since I recognize them for what they are, they are not a worrisome thing and wound not really consider going to an ER for them.

Thanks for your reply. That sounds similar to what I have. I never considered going to ER before either until this one lasted an hour.

Now I'm wondering, was the headache that followed this long aura any different than previous migraines? I never before thought of tracking the length or an aura or even whether or not I have one with the severity of the headache but it might be at least interesting to correlate them.

The pain was no worse than others. I was afraid it would be on both sides which are the worst pain.

In any case, I'm sorry you had to go through that. Those flashing zig zags are annoying at the least and dangerous if one is driving.

I'm new to the forum, but my wife suffers from migraines and has had the Aura with pain for 7 months now. her pain rates from a 4 to a 10 depending on what happens. she is wearing sunglass almost all the time and can't go to work

peabody830: Glad you made it over here from the MDJ NDPH board! I hope some folks here can answer some of your migraine symptom questions for your wife.

You may want to start a new thread to make sure folks see it (go the the Migraine subforum, then the "new topic" button on the upper left). Best wishes.

Peabody:

Welcome to the forum! Sorry to hear your wife is having a bad time. A few things to try

1) look into natural bio identical progesterone. This took me from migraines 80% of the time down to 20%.

2) keep a detailed diary of her headaches and diet. I did not believe I had any diet triggers until I did this. I discovered that lemons and nitrates (common in bacon, sausage and ham as well as processed lunch meats) were big triggers ( as well as wine which I knew).

3) several of us have gotten relief from the Cefaly.

If the prescription preventatives the neurologist gives her are not working or have signicant side effects ( the case with many of us in this forum), the above 3 approaches should be seriously considered.

Good luck!

Just answering the original question - my aura usually does not last very long, about five minutes or so. I often see a zigzag distortion in the left upper corner of my vision then it intensifies moving from left to right, as it travels across my field of vision and once it passes all the way it is over.
The aura does not have any colour, it looks like a cracked mirror distortion.

In the past aura was often followed by M. but in the last few years I get more painless M, when I have various prodrome symptoms but no M. I do get M without aura, too.