Zoomorphic interpretations

Bats

"I used to have full-blown migraines, but every 8 months or so I see my old 'friend' The Crystal Bat. It is rather pretty, but it almost totally obscures my vision, so I have to sit down until it disappears. I am relieved that the bat no longer progresses to the headache, but that 'pre' feeling is always there."

(Carol Wright, Newsgroups: alt.med.cfs, Subject: Med: Light show, July 9, 1996)

Bugs

"One time I was experiencing an aura, and I thought I saw a swarm of bugs flying around me... No, I didn't believe they were bugs - I knew it was an aura and it wasn't real. They were too small and moving too quickly for me to see any kind of detail - kinda like a swarm of gnats."

(elspethnoir, Livejournal for Support Group for Migraine Sufferers, Subject: Weirdest migraine aura, November 23, 2005)

John Tenniel's illustration of the Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Cats

"My own migraines have tended to be rather colorful. Vision gets blocked off, usually in a crescent-shaped area that's full of moving, flashing colors [scintillating scotoma] ... Lewis Carroll supposedly suffered this type of migraine. The Cheshire Cat's 'smile without a face' comes pretty close to what I see, if you stretch the corners up a bit and turn it sideways."

(O.G.R.E., Newsgroups: soc.singles.moderated, Subject: Why I've learned to love psychologists, June 10, 1997; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

"I'm 46 and I've had classic migraine as long as I can remember - 'black cats' in my peripheral vision in the run-up to the attack, then the full art deco style dancing zig zags and blank spots in my direct field of vision, overlapping with nausea and disorientation, but no real pain to speak of. I also get pretty continuous white flashing in my peripheral field that is normally only noticeable when I'm in a pitch black room. I didn't realise that was migraine-related until my ophthalmologist diagnosed it. My attacks are sporadic but clustered together - I'll get two in the space of a couple of hours, maybe, then none for months. Bright light is a definite trigger, and sometimes thundery weather. All in all, I can cope with this."

(Karen Traviss, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: Change in types of migraine?, June 30, 2002)

Christine LeBlanc, Scintillating migraine cat, watercolor, 2004. © 2004 Christine LeBlanc [more]

Ann McGriffin, Visual Disturbance, acrylic on board (13" x 18"), 2002. © 2002 Ann McGriffin [more]

"I have been a migraine with aura person for 35 years, and am also an artist. I have a painting of my migraine interpretation and would like to submit it for your [website]."

"I am attaching my Visual Disturbance painting done several years ago. This was a result of re-reading Alice in Wonderland and the line 'I have seen a cat without a smile, but never a smile without a cat.' I was like a light bulb went off in my head. I immediately related it to having a migraine. At that time, I had never read much about migraines, or Lewis Carroll's illness before this, so the connection I made was totally independent of others' comments.

I have had severe migraine with aura for over 34 years. For almost 25 years there was no medication that would relieve the pain. Thank God for Imitrex & Ambien. Before these two meds, I would have to live with the pain for up to 7 days. When I tried to explain it to people the only thing I could think of was having a brain freeze for 7 days without relief. I also experience disassociation, floating, feeling unreal, feeling physically invisible, the related numbness on one side of my body, and speech difficulties."

(Ann McGriffin, E-Mail to Klaus Podoll, June 4, 2010)

"The 'feeling invisible' that I mentioned in my previous email may be difficult to explain. I can be in a conversation with someone and my brain/mind seems to implode. My perception distorts and I seem to be listening from another dimension. I see them talking, and I interact, but I feel like I'm not really there. I know others are aware of my presence, but I feel disoriented and sometimes awkward in getting into my body to communicate. It's always been a purely physical feeling, not a mental escape method. I can remember specifically beginning at age 5-6 saying to my best friend 'I don't feel real.' I've always kind of felt like 2 eyeballs floating around observing. This must have been a precursor to having migraines???

As for my art, the painting that I sent to you is the only attempt to actually portray what I see & don't see during a migraine with aura attack. I will say, however, that after your question, and much thought, I do think that being a migraneur has definitely affected my art. A recurring theme in my work has been different forms of floating, e.g., floating heads & floating in space. So in an indirect way having migraines has played a role in who I am as an artist."

(Ann McGriffin, E-Mail to Klaus Podoll, June 4, 2010)

"After a week of rumination on your insights into my migraine with aura condition, as it pertains to my art, I am most excited to see a connection between my migraneous state and the art I produce. You have shed so much light onto me me and my art.

As I said before, the 'I don't feel real' comments to my best friend began at age 5-6, but I did not know how to explain that. Around age 11, we moved to my mother's family farm in rural southern Indiana. I am an only child, so I spent lots of time alone in the woods. I would sit on the ground and lean against trees positioning myself so I could not see my body and would become a pair of floating eyes. I also began having terrible headaches, but not the classic migraine type. I did not have the auras until around age 22. For 20-25 years, there was no medication to relieve the pain, so the onset of a migraine was terrifying and meant I would have 5-7 days of unbearable pain."

(Ann McGriffin, E-Mail to Klaus Podoll, June 15, 2010)

Pieces of coral

"I have a weird thing going on in the retina of my right eye. ... The dots I first saw have now grown into irregular patches, but I don't think any new dots have appeared. They are sharply defined, but very irregular, with 'holes' of normal vision inside them. Nearest I can come to describing their shape is like jagged pieces of coral, or 'fractal' objects. I said it was weird! ... My peripheral vision seems ok. Some mild eye-strain type headaches on that side, but that's not unusual for me."

(Chris Dancer, Newsgroups: sci.med.vision, Subject: After-image-like patches, August 6, 2001)

Sea anemones

"Just thought I'd share this, I've got a killer migraine aura that's just about to go critical, I can barely see the keyboard and I'll be a fetal ball in about two minutes, but if it wasn't making me nauseous and wasn't the harbinger of intense pain, this migraine aura would be rather pretty. It's become a giant 'c' shape all around my left field of vision. All interlaced multicoloured swirling pinwheels, doing a sort of slow, tidal square dance. Like sea anemones mating in the waves... Quite beautiful. Wish it wasn't going to be followed by hours of agony.

To beauty without pain. *sigh*

*crash*

Elaine"

(Elaine M. Brown, Newsgroups: alt.callahans, Subject: Migraine Aura, February 16, 2000)

Snakes

"My mother (84) still gets regular migraine aura without any pain associated with it. She describes her aura as 'snakes of light'. I think she's still getting them at least once a week. The aura subsides after about 20-30 minutes and then she experiences what she calls as dull headache. It's more annoying than anything. At least she knows what it is and it doesn't scare her."

(Liz Spindola, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: auras, May 5, 2002)

"Speaking of my mother... she used to suffer terrible pain with her migraines. They just seemed to evolve into what they are now... just aura..."

(Liz Spindola, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: auras, May 7, 2002)

"Your 'painless' migraines are quite common. My mom, 87, STILL gets them!! Add that to her macular degeneration and she's got a lot going on. I always remember her calling her aura 'flashing snakes'. I inherited then migraines from her and my father, but I don't experience auras."

(Liz Spindola, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: Acephalgic migraine, August 27, 2005)

"That shade of phosphene magenta is one of the two colors I'd want painted in zig-zag stripes on my sports car, if I had one (the other color would be the matching phosphene green) for two reasons:
1.) Nobody would ever steal my hideous 'Wired'-magazine-colored car.
2.) And nobody would ever crash into it, just into all the less-visible cars filled with unimportant people.
By the way, those nuclear-fluorescent shades of magenta and green are the colors of the imaginary three-dimensional snake that spins around inside my left eyeball (and only the left one) when I feel a migraine coming on due to lack of food, tiredness, etc. It starts out as this desperately-strobing blob in the center of my left visual field, and over the course of half an hour or so it gradually grows into a 'C'-shaped snake, slowly getting bigger and bigger, eventually passing out of the margins of the visual field altogether. The snake has phosphene magenta and phosphene green stripes in a double zigzag pattern like so:
//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//
...and the snake seems to be constantly revolving, like a barber pole, except there's no actual motion in any particular direction, it's just that the 'motion detector' cells in the brain are being triggered so that the snake is telling me 'Hey! I'm moving!' without any signals that any part of it is moving in any specific manner.
When I see that I know that I gotta jam a doughnut into me pronto.
-- K.
And no, I still don't have a brain tumor.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must drive a CADILLAC to a ROCKING CHAIR store in CINCINNATI."

(James "Kibo" Parry, Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology, Subject: I need a new crayon , January 19, 2004)

"WAH! Kibo's stolen my migraine precurser! Has anyone (well... other than Kibo) seen the strobing herringbone snake that lives in my eyeball?"

(Steve Christensen, Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology, Subject: I need a new crayon , January 20, 2004)

Spiders

"Anyone want the glowing multicoloured spiders that ooze amoeba-like across my vision that I had today? - Darkhawk, who thinks that migraine-with-nausea was a life experience she could have done without"

(H. Nicoll, Newsgroups: alt.polyamory, Subject: Brief thought experiment [was: SF Examiner poly article, July 19, 2001)

Worms

"Yeah, i understand the 'seeing molecules' effect, also i sometimes call it 'writhing tiny worms dancing the snow-on-tv dance' - that is, it looks as if the snow on a tv had been correographed for thousand of teensy tinsy dancing worms in a kind of mad Busby Berkeley routine."

(Catherine Yronwode, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, Subject: visual snow, January 19, 2000)

Zebra

"I too have ocular migraines... I also have noticed that... I have the zigzags/zebra stripes..."

(Sydney, Edith Frost's Homepage, March 13, 2004)

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