1.4.3 Migrainous infarction

A 31-year-old hairdresser came in two days after only his second such attack, the first having happened years earlier and settled far faster. At work he had bright, sparkling lights building gradually across his vision over more than five minutes before settling into a scattered shimmer, and as this eased he could not get his words out properly, slurring and mixing up simple sentences for a time. On this occasion the sparkling lights lasted 61 minutes in total, and the speech trouble took close to 32 minutes, to fully clear — both far longer than usual. Once these had faded, a throbbing headache took hold and lasted well into the night. He has since been told that a scan showed a small infarct in keeping with the side of his symptoms, which we believe explains the persistent headache.