Doctors who relish linguistic precision call it hemicrania, Greek for "half a head". The term refers to the first of the classical triad of symptoms: unilateral, or one sided, headache. The other two are nausea/vomiting and visual hallucinations.
Most people demonstrate their own distinctive pattern which is a combination of one or more of these. In my case, I don't get the headache or the nausea (thank Christ) but only the visual phenomena, plus a vague sense of malaise.
My hallucination is remarkably consistent: a backwards "C" shape which initially resembles a floater but enlarges to fill the visual field. The "C" contains jagged lines of colour; this morning the colours were black, yellow and white. The shape gradually enlarges until it sort of zooms out altogether, leaving the vision clear. The process can take a couple of hours; this morning, thankfully, it lasted only half an hour. They say migraine is stress related, but as my friends would doubtless tell me: you're semi-retired now, so what stress? A good point. I can only say it started when I was accompanying my FiL to the local newsagent to secure a morning paper, and it occurred that my duty was a very sad one: not so long ago he was perfectly capable of performing this task by himself, but now he would only get lost and be found wandering by the police, perhaps hours later. That's why he had to go and live in an OPH. It's necessary I know, but no less heartbreaking for that..
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