My wonderful panic attacks are back with a fury. Now they are hitting me at night. The feeling of complete, impending doom. The fear that I will die during the night.  It's absolutely horrible.

The other night. I leaped out bed screaming. My heart was racing. I felt as if my essence was leaving my body and I was in a state of complete terror.

It's just plain nuts. Or maybe I am :(

First of all, I don't have a superstitious  bone in my body. None. Zip. Zilch. Nor am I prone to apophenia. But lately, it seems like I'm seeing the number "11" everywhere.  Whenever I look up at a clock, is seems to say 11:11, or 8:11, or 6:11, or some variaton that contains "11".  I woke up at night to use the bathroom at 3:11. When I went the the grocery store the other day, it rang up $111.00.  When I went to microwave my coffee minutes before writing this, someone left it with - you guessed it - 11 seconds. I think I'm turning into Jim Carrey! Well, at least it's not "23" :-)

Anyhoos, I know this is all just coincidence. Still, it's a bit freaky.

I get migraines with a visual aura, which have been haunting me have for over 30 years. Quite often, all it takes is a random reflection from a piece of glass or something flickering on a computer monitor and - WHAM - it begins. Usually, there's an accompanying feeling of "hyper-reality"; everything seems ultra-real.

The visual aura is called scintillating scotoma, and it begins as a weird little ambiguity in the center of my field of vision. After a few minutes, it changes into the strobing colored zig-zaggy line, as in the picture I included. The line continues growing and tends to move toward the periphery, essentially giving me a psychedelic  tunnel-visioned light show. The vibrations become extremely intense, as the lines twirl and strobe in all sorts of geometric permutations.

This would be a nice little special effect, except that it leaves me visually impaired for up to 30 minutes. It also comes with nausea and a strange, throbbing headache. It's also an ironic condition to have for a designer, who relies on vision to feed the family. It does, however, inspire some of my creative work (whether I like it or not).

After the episode passes, I'm left feeling exhausted and queasy. The headache continues for a few hours. I'm also prone to have another attack or two within a week. Fun stuff, eh? Hey, could be far worse, so I'm not complaining. I just wanted to share.

There's another form of this visual aura that I'm "blessed" with as well. I'll leave that one for another journal post.

Friday is my favorite day of the week. There is great anticipation of breaking the routine of the week and getting a bit of down time. What makes Friday extra special is that Saturday follows :)