I was 32 when I had a stroke (March 4th, 2003). It was a different kind of stroke, affecting a different part of my brain, essentially related to vision. I was half blind, but I only realized something was "strange" when I saw myself in the mirror: I had only one eye. My brain knew I should have two: I was half blind.
The first diagnosis was migraine with aura (blindness in my case). But the aura should have lasted no more than an hour. Two days later, the aura (blindness) was still there (a sign of infarct but my doctor didn't know it).
I spent 2 days alone in the dark. I forgot to eat but I knew I had to call a taxi to take me to the hospital. I wasn't scared, I though it was just a migraine. It really looked and felt like my usual migraines. So my doctor had me take anti-migraine pills, which are vasoconstrictors. That might have caused the actual stroke: extreme vasoconstriction. Never take anti-migraine treatment during the aura. Never.
It took 2 days before I was diagnosed at the hospital, but they just told me "I see a shadow on the CT scan"... so I spent the next 2 days wondering what kind of shadow? stroke or cancer? And no, I didn't think about asking.
It took one week to be hospitalized for 10 days (my mother called the hospital, harassed them until she could talk to a doctor, who said it was an emergency... one week after the stroke).
It took 15 days before I woke up in the morning and thought "Wow! WOW! I'm back now!". Before that, I spent most of my time sleeping, reading half a page between two naps. I was sleeping more than I was awake.
It took 3 months before I could look at everything I wanted. Before that, looking at trees (and other complex objects) was "painful", and watching movies was too exhausting (especially action movies). During these 3 months, I recovered from blindness, but not completely. I still have a blind spot in my field of view today.
It took 6 months before my mood was really restored. Before that, I needed a daily nap, lots of soothing music, and no pressure at all.
I took aspirin daily for 3 years, after which my neurologist told me I could stop.
I had a few migraines after that, and even ended under oxygen at the hospital once, but I always recovered within 15 days.
It was 10 years ago, and it changed my life. I quit my job as a developer, spent 2 years wondering what to do next, then became a wedding photographer. In february this year, almost 10 years after, I got a new job as a developer.
> It was a different kind of stroke, affecting a different part of my brain, essentially related to vision. I was half blind, but I only realized something was "strange" when I saw myself in the mirror: I had only one eye. My brain knew I should have two: I was half blind.
There's something going on here beyond just loss of raw visual input. If you lose an eyeball, or hold your eye closed, and look in the mirror, your one good eye will still show you that you have two eyes (or, as the case may be, sockets / sets of eyelids). Perceiving yourself as having one has to involve a loss of brain function, not just a loss of eye function.
There's a similar phenomenon called contralateral neglect (or one of various other names), where after brain damage to one hemisphere of their brain, a person tends to ignore things on the opposite side. The effect is sometimes in retinal coordinates (e.g. only scan objects in one half of the field of view), sometimes in object coordinates (e.g. eat only one half of a plate of food), and sometimes in egocentric coordinates (e.g. not shave one half of their face).
This seems to be similar, but different condition. Contralateral neglect is a problem of attention: they can see the things they ignore, they just won't spontaneously pay attention to them. This is a problem of perception, where they tried to pay attention to their eye, but perceived it as not being there.
I don't have an easy explanation for how this effect occurs.
My eyes were just fine: it's the brain that was the cause here. When it occurs, I can close one eye then the other and still not see in half of my FoV.
Part of my brain was not irrigated and did not function properly...
There was nothing in /var/logs: I couldn't perceive that I was half blind. syslogd crashed :-)
Is this always one half of your field of view? Or is it one half of certain objects (e.g. your face)?
If it's the first, then it sounds like damage to one visual pathway. The visual input from each eye is divided into left and right fields, and they're processed independently. Here's a good illustration:
After the optic chiasma, the two pathways diverge. Damage any time after there, such as to the occipital lobe of one hemisphere, could result in blindness to one half of the field of view.
It've talked about the face because I did not perceive that half my field of view was missing, but when looking at myself in the mirror, I saw one eye was missing... But it really was half of my field of view.
> Before that, looking at trees (and other complex objects) was "painful"
You are the only other person I have ever heard describe looking at complex objects as sometimes painful. This happens to me sometimes, mostly with very complex and disfigured cartoon faces. Very strange. I have never had someone understand what I'm talking about when I try and describe it. Do you have any idea what causes this effect?
As a layman who has read up a bit on how the brain processes stimuli such as visual data (my mom has severe migraines and I'm afraid someday I will be told this information by a doctor on her behalf), what I understand is that if the part of the brain that would normally process these images is damaged, the brain has to be rewired to use another part for this activity. So it's "painful" because that part of the brain isn't used to processing this data, so it's inefficient at it. Looking at a static image is easy, looking at something with a complex physics system such as a lot of individually moving leaves would require more processing power. The more sprites/polygons on screen, the harder it is to render, to use computing examples.
I might be wrong, and I would love to be educated further if my understanding is incorrect. I hope I never need to use this information in my life.
wow. you usually hear how the usa is a litigious place and that make doctors scared of new treatments and what not... but that's just negligence. anyway you look at it. probably from several professionals you talked to during those first days.
The first diagnosis was migraine with aura (blindness in my case). But the aura should have lasted no more than an hour. Two days later, the aura (blindness) was still there (a sign of infarct but my doctor didn't know it).
I spent 2 days alone in the dark. I forgot to eat but I knew I had to call a taxi to take me to the hospital. I wasn't scared, I though it was just a migraine. It really looked and felt like my usual migraines. So my doctor had me take anti-migraine pills, which are vasoconstrictors. That might have caused the actual stroke: extreme vasoconstriction. Never take anti-migraine treatment during the aura. Never.
It took 2 days before I was diagnosed at the hospital, but they just told me "I see a shadow on the CT scan"... so I spent the next 2 days wondering what kind of shadow? stroke or cancer? And no, I didn't think about asking.
It took one week to be hospitalized for 10 days (my mother called the hospital, harassed them until she could talk to a doctor, who said it was an emergency... one week after the stroke).
It took 15 days before I woke up in the morning and thought "Wow! WOW! I'm back now!". Before that, I spent most of my time sleeping, reading half a page between two naps. I was sleeping more than I was awake.
It took 3 months before I could look at everything I wanted. Before that, looking at trees (and other complex objects) was "painful", and watching movies was too exhausting (especially action movies). During these 3 months, I recovered from blindness, but not completely. I still have a blind spot in my field of view today.
It took 6 months before my mood was really restored. Before that, I needed a daily nap, lots of soothing music, and no pressure at all.
I took aspirin daily for 3 years, after which my neurologist told me I could stop.
I had a few migraines after that, and even ended under oxygen at the hospital once, but I always recovered within 15 days.
It was 10 years ago, and it changed my life. I quit my job as a developer, spent 2 years wondering what to do next, then became a wedding photographer. In february this year, almost 10 years after, I got a new job as a developer.
I'm back on rails (node.js to be precise :-)