My Son's Brain

My eight year-old son, Dale, gets migraines. I have been told by his doctor this is not that unusual. For the past couple of years, we have handled his migraines well. Some ibuprofen and some rest and he was usually good as new the next day.

He woke with a headache on Sunday morning. This is not his normal pattern for such things. His migraines usually come on in the afternoon and are gone by morning. Sunday morning we followed the routine, and gave him the ibuprofen and had him lay down and hour later he was much better.

Sunday night, this was not the case. He didn't have a headache. Instead several times through the night, he woke screaming and crying. The world around him felt as it if was speeding past him. He held his head in his hands and while crying repeated over and over "It's so fast! It's so fast!". Other sensations joined this one. At different points he felt as if he were falling or he said that I was speaking very fast to him (which I wasn't). He also had nausea and threw up once.

After a call to his doctor's office, which was answered by an triage nurse service, not the doctor's office, we spent a long time debating what to do with our little boy. In the end, he fell asleep again and decided to let him sleep (now in our bed) but should he wake again we'd take him to the emergency room. He then slept the rest of the night.

The next day, I set up an appointment with his doctor. Dale woke up feeling good, but tired. He seemed relatively unaffected that morning by the chaos of the night before. This was really good because all the web sites I had visited about brain tumors said morning is usually the worst time for such an affliction.

I love my children's pediatrician, despite her lack of better overnight oncall services. After going through all of his symptoms and giving several different motorskill tests, she reassured me. She said that she's pretty sure he was experiencing an atypical migraine. An atypical migraine usually comes without pain but comes with other odd symptoms, often including nausea. It was just his brain's way of interpreting the tightening of blood vessels which usually causes the pain.

This all sounded really good and made sense but still, it had been a terrifying night. So, the doctor wisely sent Dale in for a MRI of his brain.

This morning that is exactly where I was. I was standing next to an MRI machine, resting my hand on my son's leg to reassure him through the MRI. He was really good though and didn't move a muscle through the entire thing. The MRI tech gave him a x-ray type print out of his head. When I dropped Dale at school he showed his brain off to his class.

Now, we wait for the radiologist and the pediatrician and then get the results that hopefully really will say there is nothing more serious than migraines going on here.

Have you heard of this phenomenon before? I get aura's with my migraines..flashes and halos around things. I know that poor Dale gets his migraines because of me. Still, the whole vertigo, fast-talk/movement thing was really scary. So, stories of...oh yeah my so-and-so had that and is just fine...would be comforting.