I’m sorry if I am harping on too much but I’m 30+ hours into this migraine attack and thoroughly miserable and the previous post on my blog (about epilepsy warnings) resurfaced a core memory of my first major neurological event that landed me in the ER.
We were at the movie theater watching Incredibles 2 and slight spoilers: the villain uses mind control/hypnosis on people. Anyway, this lead to a fight scene where all of a sudden, in this pitch black room, circular strobing patterns appeared on the screen.
It was so sudden and intense that even with my eyes closed I could see it, and within seconds I knew something wasn’t right because my body felt like it was rocking back and forth like I was on a boat.
I remember looking down at my hands, which were gripping the faded red velour of the seat in a white knuckled grip as the world tipped violently around me. My mouth started watering. I was shaking. I remember telling the people I was with I was going to go to the bathroom. Walking was a nightmare, I had barely any coordination. I made it to the bathroom and collapsed on the floor of the nearest stall and proceeded to vomit so profusely I burst a blood vessel under my eye. I couldn’t stop shaking.
Epilepsy runs in my family, so I took my ass to the ER, fearful that this could be a prelude to something worse. After many, many, many hours, and the debilitating pain had finally embedded itself into my skull, the neurology team on call pronounced it to have been an unfortunate migraine/vertigo attack triggered by the strobing effect.
And I remember the nurse saying, “be thankful you’re not an epileptic,” thinking, yeah, there was a warning at the start of the movie about flashing effects, most movies have them. But I remember thinking it was a profoundly vile and evil thing to put that particular pattern of flashing lights in a movie that countless people would see blown up on a giant screen in a darkened room.
I “only” have migraines. If I had a different kind of neurological disorder, it could have killed me.
And now TikTok and Instagram is a thing and people just make strobing effect videos for fun and get mad when you ask them to tag for it, because using that tag won’t get them to the top of FYPage. Or maybe it’s not even motivated by gain. Perhaps it’s just annoyance at being asked to care for other people. Which is so much worse.


















