I have a pretty bad case of migraines, and it's gotten worse.  It basically got worse when I lost my preventative treatment and the health insurance stopped covering it.  All sorts of new disturbing symptoms have developed the past few months.  Lost/double vision; vertigo, the list goes on.

I was finally able to find a neurologist who told me that he wanted to do an MRI to make sure it was not a tumor.  This scared me but I finally did it.  I did the MRI last Saturday, with and without contrast, and was waiting for the results. They also did a doppler of my head to evaluate blood flow. This has been expensive and time consuming, losing work time to appointments and the migraines themselves.

The paramedics were here in January when I had sudden vision loss. That was new to me, I've had aura and other ocular disturbances, but I never lost my vision almost completely before. I declned to go to the ER in January because, well, bills. I didn't want the expense of the ambulance ride, tests, etc. I wanted to handle it as an outpatient.

So I've been awaiting the results from Saturday's MRI, when suddenly out of nowhere yesterday I was awakened in the middle of the night; I woke up very suddently, I had an intense pressure on the top of my head traveling down over my eyes.  It felt squishy like fluid. I was having trouble swallowing and there was a pressure on the left side of my neck, like a swelling there.  My face was ice cold, and the left side of my body went weak. My left arm was cold and numb.  I felt tingling on my feet. I had thought of driving to the hospital because ambulance expense, but I felt like I was ready to pass out then and there. So off I went in an ambulance to the hospital. I had to call work and tell them I was not in that morning. 

They did several tests but were unable to get the resuts of Saturday's MRI, which was really frustrating. I wouldn't have had to do a second one in the hospital if the results could have been sent over... There was only one MRI machine and the doctor refused to let me go until I got MRI results. He was thinking stroke.  I arrived there about 3:30 in the A.M. By ten o clock they did the CT scan, and EKG. I wanted to go home because those were normal and I was irritiated that I had to do yet another MRI but I would have left against medical advice. I had to wait until 5 PM. to get to the MRI machine-there was only one and I was not allowed to eat or drink all day.  I was so tired. Thank God the MRI was normal as were the other tests. I didn't get home until about 7 PM that evening.  I was so exhausted that I was asleep until 2 PM today. A nurse thought I had an anxiety attack and that's what brought me there???  

I will meet with the neurologist next week. The ER seems to think the vertigo/near syncope has a vascular/cardiac cause. I vaguely remember getting up off the tile in the middle of the night recently and wonder if I'm sleepwalking.  My migraines used to be isolated and predictable. There is a type of migraine called vestibular migrane which causes vertigo and hemipligic migraine where it functions like a stroke and one side of your body goes weak.  I wonder if that is what happened.  I have never had a migraine begin while I was sleeping or wake me up out of sleeping. The insurance company won't cover the preventative Nurtec so we are going to try Topriamate. I've never used it before.  I hate this. Now knowing that the test results didn't show anything serious I wish I didn't go to the ER, but I guess left-arm pain and weakness is not to be ignored. I did read that a TIA or mini stroke may not show up on tests, but a lot of these migraines can mimick strokes.