Becca T

Artists's website

Becca T, My migraine zigzags, 2006. © 2006 Becca T

The 16-year-old girl from Tasmania, Australia, wrote: "My migraines started a while ago, I can't really remember, sometime after puberty so something after I was 14. I don't know what kind of migraine I have but these are my symptoms in the order they appear: (1.) Very slight headache or tight feeling in head. (2.) Blind/weird vision spot - I usually notice this when I look at my hand and it doesn't look like my hand. (3.) Blind spots increase in size and severity. (4.) Flashing zigzag rainbow lights in the bottom right of my vision. (5.) Intense nausea and sensitivity to light and sounds (these cause discomfort and more nausea). (6.) Usually followed by vomiting and sleeping it off. My migraines usually last for a day. My mum gets them (no visual things, though she used to when she was younger) and when she does they stay for 3 days or so. They used to be brought on at the same time roughly as my period started but I haven't had one for quite a while now, probably a year or a bit less.

Blind spots occur at the beginning of the migraine and may last for most of it or just half an hour or so. I also get rainbow flashy zigzags, they last for most of the severe part of the migraine and fade as the migraine does. My zigzags are somewhat like the ones in the picture on the left here except there's only between 1 and 3 lines of them, they are pretty much straight horizontal, short, and they flash and pulsate with white and various bright rainbow colours. I am attaching a picture I attempted to draw in Paint of my zigzags, it's not a very good representation but the best I could do. They are very white and sprakly rainbow and they pulsate and flash, rapidly changing colours. They are like bright lights, reminiscent of the lights you get in your eyes from looking at bright lights or pressing your hands into your eyes for a while. If you put your face close to the computer, shake your head from side to side fast whilst looking at the picture, that's what it looks like, only brighter."

(Email to Klaus Podoll, April 10, 2006)

"Also, I do have synaesthesia but I really don't think my migraine aura has anything to do with it, unless my zigzag lights are my syn's interpretation of the particular head pain and nausea? I'm not entirely sure, I haven't had a migraine since before I found out about synaesthesia... if I have another one sometime I'll try to take more notice of my syn, and let you know what I discover."

(Email to Klaus Podoll, April 10, 2006)

pirate-soul [aka mushroom_maiden], synaesthesia letters and numbers, 2006. Image from the Synesthesia Battery developed by Dr. David Eagleman, www.synesthete.org (see here)

"This is how I view letters and numbers, these are the colours I associate with them."

(pirate-soul [aka mushroom_maiden], artist's website at Deviant Art, March 26, 2006)

"Well... my synaesthesia I guess has always been around, as far as I can tell. I have association type syn, in which I associate colours and sometimes other feelings to weekdays, numbers, letters, months etc... I also get music → colour/image syn and in general music has a big effect on me. I can remember associating colours with numbers etc. for a long time, I don't remember when it started but I've probably always had it, at a guess. I only said what you quoted [i.e. 'I haven't had a migraine since before I found out about synaesthesia'] meaning until I found this community, I had no idea that what I was doing with colours and weekdays and stuff was anything more than just me being weird, I didn't know it had a name or anything like that. And yeah, I haven't had a migraine for about a year now. Sorry that I can't be more specific about when my syn started, I guess I've had it as far as I can remember.

Hope that helps. Any more questions, feel free to ask!"

(Email to Klaus Podoll, April 11, 2006; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

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