Migraine Lightshow

I was home with a migraine for most of the day yesterday, laying in bed with a thick blindfold to block out all external light. I normally experience a heightened sensitivity to light with my migraines, but I rarely have other visual effects. But yesterday, with my eyes closed in the perfect darkness, I was treated to quite a show of lights and colors.

Blobs of dingy purple and greenish gold blossomed and flowed into bizarre shapes, pushing against one another, as unmixable as oil and water. Then there were the jagged flashes of white, like lightning piercing clouds roiled by strong winds. The flashes seemed to highlight the edges of abstract, sharp-edged forms, which appeared three-dimensional and organic, but not recognizable as anything I had ever seen before. Overlaid upon all of this was a hazy gray static. The pattern changed quickly and never repeated.

I'm not sure how long this went on, since I never took off the blindfold to look at the clock, but I would guess at least an hour. It was strangely beautiful, like watching a lava lamp. But I'm glad I didn't try to stay at work. Pain aside, it would probably have been difficult to look at a computer screen with all that visual disruption.