Migraines and getting my medical back

[mslisaj]

Two weeks ago I had my second "optical migraine" in over a year. This time I ended up in emergency as it was thought to be a TIA at first. But after all the tests and reviews it was determined that is was a migraine. I have grounded myself at this time and called AOPA and got some great advice. The process to get a special issuance letter seems very straight forward as my medical is due for renewal in four months. My question is that I am not on any drugs to prevent this from happening again as the doctor didn't feel that was necessary being it's only happened twice in 14 months. The reality was it wasn't that debilitating of an event. I just got a slight headache with the optical aura in the lower right third of my field of vision with some garbled speech and all this lasted less then 10 minutes.

So my question is how are the Feds likely to handle this situation? Everything I have read seems to end with type of medication and how it is tolerated being the criteria for the SI letter. Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.............

Thanks so much.

Lisa

 

[bbchien]

Lisa, you need a neurologist's medical description of your episode the aura, how much warning you get, and the frequency. With the optical field loss, and speech, they are not going to approve you at all, until six months go by without an episode.

What are they waiting for with twice in 14 months? They're not going to recertify you given that type of episode, and so you need to have some abort medication. If you are successfully able to abort an episode, and have less than an episode a month, and the aborted episode has no visual nor speech garble (yours is left occipital in origin), the MRI is negative, (I hope you haven't had an EEG, but if you have it's got to be negative) you can get approved.

They're okay with the -triptans, being used with the infrequency I've noted above. If your migraine does not comply with the above resolved outline, the file gets either denied, or sent out to an FAA external neurological consultant. With your profile of an episode, the consultants recommend AGAINST special issuance (or any issuance) about 3/4ths of the time.

Dr. Bruce