Were you all as fascinated as I was to find that reporter Serene Branson's on-air confusion and garbled speech was due to a complex migraine. When I saw the clip on the news that night I also thought immediately that she'd had "stoke-like" symptoms, but even as much as I think about migraine... it just didn't pop into my head immediately. I've personally never experienced that type of severe aura. I've definitely had issues of "cloudiness" and not being able to think as quickly as normal... but nothing to that degree. Fascinating... and I felt so relieved for her to hear that it was a migraine aura and NOT a stroke.
Sounds like she has had migraines for some time, was experiencing a "normal" migraine at the time, and has family history. But, she didn't think that those severe symptoms were from the migraine either. What an eye-opener for the entire country to have seen that... hopefully it's educated a lot of non-migraineurs to the fact that migraine is a brain disease... and things happen to us that are WAY beyond our control.
Click on the image at right to watch an interview with Serene Branson and learn more about complex migraines.
EDIT Feb. 23, 2011: I just found another interview with Serene where she says she never had a migraine before and only after her episode learned of the family history... so my statements above are based on the Today Show interview, but for accuracy, here is another interview where the info is different. I edited here only because I think it's even more fascinating if she never had migraines before... goes to show that they really CAN come on at any time in life and with little to no warning (or warning that you might notice).
You can also find more information about complex migraines at the resources below:
http://www.healthcentral.com/migraine/question-answer-27079-63.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_2182428_manage-complex-migraine.html
No more migraines,
Kelli :)
