eye pricking, migraine, tinnitus

[leila]

I've had migraines for years now, but they have changed form.  They now occurr regularly, almost daily.  For some time they have started with pricking in my left eye. This is very irritating and frequently my eyelid swells too.  I get twitching of the eyelid and area beneath the eye.  This then leads on to the headache - left-sided, in temple, around eye and in cheek and upper jaw.  I've also had numbness and tingling on left side of nose & mouth and weakness in left hand and outer left leg.  This, along with problems pronouncing some words, and thinking!  All in all, a real nuisance & a bit scary.  I am being treated for migraine with preventative medication and also have triptans on hand, which finally got rid of the last 3 week long migraine after 3 doses over 2 days.  The actual pain isn't agonising, but relentlessly debilitating.
I'm worried about the problem starting in my eye.  I've never heard of prickling eye pain like this before - it's like sand in the eye.  Also, I'm getting transient waves of weakness and odd sensations on left side almost daily.  I have developed left-sided tinnitus, which seems to get louder when I have a migraine.  I feel my memory has been affected and I have trouble writing without making a mess of words - my hand suddenly does a silly move and wrecks the otherwise neat sentence!  I haven't had an MRI or similar, so I'm taking it on trust from the neuro that this is migraine.  Could the writing problem have been caused by this and what do you make of the tinnitus too?  I'd be grateful for any comments you might have.  Thanks.

[CCF-Neuro-M.D.-PW]

Migraine can change over time as one gets older
It can change from the classic throbbing headache with nausea as a teenager to a more chronic headache sometimes with focal neurological symptoms like weakness and tingling of one side of the body

However, as migraine is common in the general population, other causes must be excluded in case they are something else. So, in any patient with a headache and a focal neurological symptom (as above), in our opinion, an MRI must be done, even if it sounds like migraine.

While your history is still consistent with migraine, an MRI brain should be done to exclude other causes. Then, you can be more comfortable that this is migraine, and use the anti-migraine medications appropriately.

Migraine (and some other headache types like cluster/hemicrania/and SUNCT) can cause autonomic and eye symptoms, that is, affect the autonomic  and regular nerves controlling tearing, eye sensation, etc like you describe. Of course, local eye complaint like conjuctivitis sound like this too, and may need to be excluded in your case

Tinnitus on one side is not a classic migraine symptom, and would be another reason to get an MRI

Good luck

[inspirator]

A related discussion, Weakness in legs sometimes giving way altogether was started.