How the DMV Cured My Migraines

Posted by 5x5 on April 9, 2010 under Geek Talk | 2 Comments to Read

After giving up caffeine, migrane headaches became a far and few between part of my life. I would have 2-3 a year versus the caffeine fed 2-3 a week, some of them lasting for multiple days. What an unpleasant surprise to have them show up again in the last month and be at an increasingly high frequency. I always knew when the pain portion of these new headaches was about to begin, because my vision would get flaky right before the pain started to creep out from behind my eyes and across my forehead.

What differed about these current migranes, was the fact that my vision typically did not suffer greatly before or during an episode. I would experience pain behind my eyes, but never a measurable vision impairment. The migraines continued.

As if a headache is not enough to handle on its own, I had to stop by two DMV offices today. In NC there are different offices for handling license plates versus driver licenses. The first office did not help or hinder the migraine, despite they needed a second notorization on the car title requiring cash from their conviently placed ATM with a $3 service charge.

The second DMV was extremely helpful. The cheerful DMV lady, glad to have Saturday right around the corner, asked me to smash my head into the visual testing machine 50 other people smashed their sweaty head into previously. The machine functioned like binoculars, spliting the eyes. The left column was blurry. So blurry infact, I could barely make out the letter shapes to guess at what they were. The middle column was less blurry and the right column was very clear, but made my right eye feel strained. How odd.

As I started up my car, renewed licesce exam complete, it dawned on me. “Dumb ass, you have your contact lenses switched.” I am now the proud owner of a contact lens case with the letters “L” and “R”.

After giving up caffeine, migraine headaches became a far and few between part of my life. I would have 2-3 a year versus the caffeine fed 2-3 a week, some of them lasting for multiple days. What an unpleasant surprise to have the migraines show up again in the last month and be at an increasingly high frequency. I always knew when the pain portion of these new headaches was about to begin, because my vision would get flaky right before the pain started to creep out from behind my eyes and across my forehead.

What differed about these current migraines, was the fact that my vision typically did not suffer greatly before or during an episode. I would experience pain behind my eyes and a slight “haze”, but never a measurable vision impairment.

As if a headache is not enough to handle on its own, I had to stop by two DMV offices today. In North Carolina there are different offices for handling license plates versus driver licenses. The first office did not help or hinder the migraine, despite they needed a second notarization on the car title requiring cash from their conveniently placed ATM with a $3 service charge.

Knowing left from right should be left up to grown-ups.

The second DMV was extremely helpful. The cheerful DMV lady, glad to have Saturday right around the corner, asked me to smash my head into the visual testing machine 50 other people smashed their sweaty heads into previously. The machine functioned like binoculars, splitting the eyes. The left column was blurry. So blurry in-fact, I could barely make out the letter shapes to guess at what they were. The middle column was less blurry and the right column was very clear, but made my right eye feel strained. How odd.

As I started up my car, renewed license exam complete, it dawned on me, “Dumb ass, you have your contact lenses switched.” I am now the proud owner of a contact lens case with the letters “L” and “R”.

Phil Buckley said,

That’s why I stick with glasses, I would have to be very hazy indeed to have those flipped ;-)
Dorit said,

Haha!
I had the exact same problem at the DMV just a couple of weeks ago. The left column was so blurry I just decided to ignore it :)
Need to schedule an eye appointment!