The Migraine Aura Variety Show

Lightning bolts, halo effects, and the occasional disappearing ankle.

This morning my vision is cloudy.

Not the dignified sort of cloudy you get with a gentle fog rolling across a quiet English meadow. No. This is the sort of cloudy that suggests someone has enthusiastically smeared Vaseline across my eyeballs while I was sleeping.

At first you think perhaps the glasses need cleaning. You polish them. You polish them again. You hold them up to the light like a suspicious jeweler inspecting a diamond.

Then you realize the problem is not the glasses.

The problem is you.

A few days ago, for instance, there was a lightning bolt along the left side of my vision. Not metaphorically. I mean an honest-to-goodness jagged streak of light, as though Zeus had taken a small personal interest in my optic nerve.

Sometimes there is a halo around everything I see.

This sounds rather spiritual until you realize it makes the entire world look like it has been softly airbrushed by a Renaissance painter attempting to depict Heaven.

It’s very lovely.

It’s also extremely inconvenient when you’re trying to read something on your phone.

All of this, you see, is the aura portion of a migraine.

The migraine itself may or may not show up later, like an unpleasant relative who occasionally drops by unannounced and rearranges the furniture inside your skull.

But the aura always arrives first, like a theatrical opening act.

It has quite a repertoire.

Five years ago my husband and I were in a very large airport attempting to catch a flight. This required the usual Olympic event known as Sprinting Through Terminal B While Dragging Carry-On Luggage.

We were doing quite well.

Then, halfway across the terminal, my right ankle resigned.

There was no warning. No memo. No polite two-week notice.

It simply stopped working.

One moment I was walking briskly. The next moment my foot had apparently decided it would prefer not to be involved in this activity anymore.

So there I was, dragging my foot across the airport floor like a Victorian ghost while hauling my suitcase behind me and attempting to keep up with my husband, who—bless him—was still operating under the impression that both of my feet were functional.

If you have never attempted to hobble frantically through an airport while pretending nothing is wrong, I can assure you it adds a certain athletic complexity to air travel.

This, in a nutshell, is what it is like to live with the aura of migraine.

I never know what I’m going to wake up to.

Cloudy vision. Lightning bolts. Halo effects. A limb that has quietly decided to take the morning off.

Some people live with magicians.

Some people live with clowns.

I don’t need either.

My nervous system handles the entertainment all by itself.

And frankly, it puts on quite a show.