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Praise where praise is due Leicester Royal Infirmary.

toolsntat

toolsntat

Nordic Pine
Joined
Apr 4, 2021
Messages
677
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308
Location
Leicestershire
Name
Andy
A few times in recent years I've been referred to LRI for problems, all, thankfully, with good positive outcomes.

Once again yesterday and today.

Sunday evening I lost central focal vision when looking at things which lasted for about 20-30 minutes with a small mosaic in that area through both eyes accompanied with a headache.
With sight back to normal I paid a visit to a walk in centre (not LRI) as recommended by online 111.
Seen at midnight and vitals checked.
Established they could not see me properly till 2am.
As people were waiting to bring me home and the nurses couldn't find anything to concern them, rightly or wrongly I went home.
Went to opticians first thing Monday looking for answers as to what had happened.
They recommend I go to eye casualty at LRI.
Through the system
They explained it was borderline that I had suffered a bad migraine attack but from the symptoms they couldn't rule out a "TRANSIENT ISCHAEMIC ATTACK " a precursor to the risk of a stroke.
I wasn't expecting that!
Immediately booked in for a full day TIA investigative clinic from 8.30 next morning.
Thankfully, after numerous tests, I am reassured it was after all a migraine attack.

Relieved, Andy
 
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duke said:
Are you prone to migraines, I know a few people who are and they say it is horrible.
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Not these days, now being self employed I have less stress in my life than I used to have.
It was interesting to mention to them today that certain perfumes, aftershaves, deodorants, vapes etc give me an instant migraine like pain and they had heard of it.
I just thought it was me.
 
Blimey, things must have changed. When I lived in Leicester, the LRI was renowned as overcrowded, understaffed, and pretty much impossible to park at. Indeed, parking within any sort of walk of the place was all but impossible. I'm glad your experience was pretty good.
 
Mike G said:
Blimey, things must have changed. When I lived in Leicester, the LRI was renowned as overcrowded, understaffed, and pretty much impossible to park at. Indeed, parking within any sort of walk of the place was all but impossible. I'm glad your experience was pretty good.
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Parking is still indeed a challenge at LRI but Leicester does have a good Park and Ride system which works well as long as you're mobile and not vulnerable to infection due to low immunity. Worth considering if there's no need to park right by the hospital.
At least one of the bus stops is directly outside the hospital.
 
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Glad you had a positive experience.

I think that with news reports about the NHS it's easy to get the idea that nothing works, but in reality really good treatment happens everywhere, almost all of the time.
 
As a fellow migraine sufferer who has also had the odd related complication I’m glad you got diagnosed and sorted quickly.
 
Her majesty and I have both had cause to use the three Leicester hospitals over the last five years and have nothing but praise for all of them.
 
AndyP said:
As a fellow migraine sufferer who has also had the odd related complication I’m glad you got diagnosed and sorted quickly.
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Wife suffers horribly with headache and migraine, neurologist puts 36 injections of botox in her head every 3 months which reduces the severity and frequency.
 
Glad you were given the all clear.

I've had migraines most of my life. Mercifully, they have never been very frequent (two or three a year) and have got much milder as I've got older.

Normal pattern nowadays is that I notice an aura coming on. Usually I notice first because I struggle to read my watch or something else. The aura then grows to take up a big chunk of my vision and then moves out of my vision. Usually it's over in 10 minutes and I'm only left with a very mild headache.

However, about 2 years ago I had a different experience which involved a full on aura coming on almost instantly. My first thought was that I was about to faint but then realised I felt pretty much fine. After a few hours of it coming and going (I was home alone and couldn't drive), my wife got home and took me to hospital. They took me straight in and kept me in all day. They were fairly sure it was an abnormal (for me) migraine. Eventually it subsided and I went home but they said to come back in the next day if it came back. It did come back and they gave me a scan which was clear. They concluded it was a migraine.

I had a milder version of the same thing a week later but nothing since then other than a few "normal" migraines.

I think what triggered it was overexertion. I was building my table at the time and it happened while I was handling big heavy sycamore boards and just after I had moved my planer thicknesser (by myself)!
 
wallace said:
Wife suffers horribly with headache and migraine, neurologist puts 36 injections of botox in her head every 3 months which reduces the severity and frequency.
Click to expand...
Wow! Nowhere near as bad as that and it’s been a long time since I’ve had pins and needles in hands and tongue as a result of migraine which started in my 20s when the candle was burnt at both ends coupled with irregular meal times. 4 episodes of transient global amnesia* in past few years could also be migraine linked but likely linked to stress.
Headaches these days are no longer vomit inducing and are more akin to a morning after hangover. The visual disturbances /auras are still regular and normally in batches - 3 or 4 in a week and then nothing for weeks.

*the first TGA was initially feared to be stroke symptoms by emergency phone doctor and resulted in A&E visit.
 
Duncan A said:
.........Leicester does have a good Park and Ride system which works well ...... .....
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Not if you live to the East or South of the city I'm afraid.

Parking nightmares seem to be a major stress builder at many hospitals, both Cheltenham and Glous. are very problematic, but do have a good 15min P&R access.
Text messages calling you in for an appointment after 7PM, while appreciated for good service, are still a parking challenge though as P&R stop about 8PM.
 
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Mike G said:
Blimey, things must have changed. When I lived in Leicester...
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As did I, very early 60's just prior to the Beatles phenomenon (they didn't live in Leicester though😁) Dad was in the RN and worked out of the recruiting office in the city, which is probably still there and we had a large ground floor flat on the Loughborough Rd just past the junction with Belgrave Rd - Rob
 
toolsntat said:
Sunday evening I lost central focal vision when looking at things which lasted for about 20-30 minutes with a small mosaic in that area through both eyes accompanied with a headache.
Click to expand...
That's a pretty good description of the migraines I used to get.

In my case, mostly, the vision disturbance would actually stop and the headache would happen 20-30 minutes later. Sometimes they overlapped though.

I knew one might be coming on when the edges of objects I focused on started to sparkle and shimmer. Losing central vision was the 2nd stage, for me, but it happened within minutes usually. A whole episode, including the headache, would be two to four hours, and leave me pretty low-powered for the rest of the day, otherwise nothing long-term was apparent.

If (big IF) I got to a dark bedroom and was able to lie down as soon as the symptoms started, it wouldn't progress to a full migraine. But any attempt to power on through was 'whoops, apocalypse!'

Triggers were lifestyle stress (e.g. when paid work and academic deadlines coincided, etc.), and earlier, in my twenties, bright sunlight on the water when I was dinghy sailing. High barometric pressure days were worse than wet ones.

I think I got used to noticing trigger conditions building up, as the migraines themselves became a lot less frequent, and I haven't had a full-on one for around 30 years. I have had a few occasions when the vision disturbances have happened, but I got to a darkened room early enough for it not to progress.

I tell you this to encourage, NOT as a diagnosis! I think the medics are quite right to be cautious, and it sounds like you're in very good hands.
 
I have - like NickM says a maybe a couple of times a year - the visual symptoms of migraine. Usually after a lot of display screen use. Never accompanied by a headache for me though, and usually gone within the hour. Ibuprofen lysine (AKA Neurofen migraine relief) speeds that. I found on the web somewhere images of what it looked like which were remarkably accurate. A kind of jagged rainbow effect. The site gave two causes, migraine or occular migraine - the latter is a problem with the eye itself. A clue as to which is whether it affects both eyes (probably migraine) or just one eye (could be occular migraine). But how do you tell ? It is coming from the retina or downstream of it, not something real you are looking at, so stays there when you close one eye at a time !

Anyway, glad to hear you got a reassuring diagnosis Andy.
 
Many years ago I lost visual processing on one side for about 20-30 minutes (once I’d recognised what was going on). Neurological. Went to ER in case of stroke, but it just resolved so no real action. (Follow up MRI didn’t reveal anything interesting).

I was reading a book and I was finding it hard to read. Couldn’t understand why at first, but then realised I couldn’t see the text to one side of the focal point. Like it didn’t exist. I could see the page, the book, the surroundings, but the text wasn’t there, but if I moved my focus then I could see different text. When you read, you normally can see text both ahead and behind where you’re reading and subconscious processing either prepares you or lets you catch up. I was missing half of that so I could still read just slowly. Spent a while trying to work it out.

When I realised the problem, I looked up to tell my wife. Oops - no face! Yikes! I could see her head, her hair, the room, but if I looked directly at her, there were no features. If she stood to one side of me and I didn’t look directly at her then back to normal.

She did “how many fingers am I holding up” and moved her hand - as soon as it moved to one side of me I couldn’t see the fingers to count them. Couldn’t see the hand; only the arm.

Anyway, that was fun
 
I get visual disturbances usualy in a cluster of 2-3, it starts with a small fuzzy patch in the midile of my vision which spreads out in a banana shape untill it disappeares out of my vision, I see roling bars of blue yellow and white in the disturbance which are quite nice but you can't look at them directly, then I feel totally knackered and have to sleep. I some times notice mood swings before they come on.

Pete
 
AndyP said:
Wow! Nowhere near as bad as that and it’s been a long time since I’ve had pins and needles in hands and tongue as a result of migraine which started in my 20s when the candle was burnt at both ends coupled with irregular meal times. 4 episodes of transient global amnesia* in past few years could also be migraine linked but likely linked to stress.
Headaches these days are no longer vomit inducing and are more akin to a morning after hangover. The visual disturbances /auras are still regular and normally in batches - 3 or 4 in a week and then nothing for weeks.

*the first TGA was initially feared to be stroke symptoms by emergency phone doctor and resulted in A&E visit.
Click to expand...
Poor thing has had a headache everyday for 19 years and then 2-3 migraines a week. She was one of the first to have botox therapy, back then it was done in an operating theatre all gowned up, now its a consultation room.
 
wallace said:
Poor thing has had a headache everyday for 19 years and then 2-3 migraines a week. She was one of the first to have botox therapy, back then it was done in an operating theatre all gowned up, now its a consultation room.
Click to expand...

I’d never heard of Botox for migraines treatment before. Just read up on it. I really do not want to imagine how severe her headaches and migraines must have been and hope the botox has helped.
 
My goodness, I count myself lucky compared to some of the people mentioned here.
Hopefully this attack will be an isolated incident regarding migraine sight problems.
Makes me wonder how long this could go on for before it has an effect on my driving driving and if so what the options are?
Nothing was mentioned.
I'm left racking my brain trying to pinpoint the trigger.
Andy
 
Mike G said:
Blimey, things must have changed. When I lived in Leicester, the LRI was renowned as overcrowded, understaffed, and pretty much impossible to park at. Indeed, parking within any sort of walk of the place was all but impossible. I'm glad your experience was pretty good.
Click to expand...
I've thankfully not seen anything to suggest staffing problems myself.
Yes, the parking can be a mare and I tend to get there a minimum of an hour before the appointment when I have the option to drive myself there.
Owing to the fact I have to go in a high top transit I have to hope for a space before the multistorey carpark, prior to a previous visit I asked the carparks office regarding this and they said I could use an area where public parking is restricted.
Luckily I have family to fall back on in circumstances where I cannot drive myself.

Andy
 
Shucks you guys sound like serious condition and headaches.
You have my sympathy.
The only time I really suffered from headaches was after cycling 50 to 150km. Position of crouching over the handle bars.
Lie down quietly for couple of hours. Went through the Neurologist and Surgeon and MRI. It was a nerve pinching at the top of the neck. Cut down on any long distance rides, eventually had to stop. Only time now is standing bending over a project in the workshop, 2 Panados and 30 minute lie down.
 
beyond the early years of over work, over play and poor diet I have never pinpointed a trigger. I do now avoid caffeine at home and dark chocolate at max of 75% cocoa. I went through the stress of premature twins and months of poor sleep without ever having a migraine yet can be out and about on a casual walk and can suffer. I have only kept a log since 2021 and there is no discernible pattern in time of day, activity nor external stressful related events.
Keeping a log is important in case any future events require further specialist interventions.

I do carry 500mg and 1000mg paracetamol and have taken them at the onset of the visual disturbances which tend to disappear after 15-20mins.
 
AndyP said:
I’d never heard of Botox for migraines treatment before. Just read up on it. I really do not want to imagine how severe her headaches and migraines must have been and hope the botox has helped.
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She used to spend days in a darkened room with ice packs and a sick bowl, it is only about one day a week now. There are quite a few treatments and coping mechanisms nowadays depending on what type of migraine one gets.
A few years ago they were trialing a device called a trans cranial stimulation device. After it was switched on you could here it ramp up some kind of charge, you held it to the back of your head with two handles and once it reached its peak it would beep and you would press a button creating a loud crack. A bit like a defib machine. That created some strange symptoms so we gave it back.
One quite good device is a cefaly, it is like a tens machine for the head. It can be used to prevent migraines or treat an attack. They have changed since they first came out. The old ones made you look like geordi la forge off star trek
 
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