My sister is currently in hospital after a migraine, which may or may not be incidental to her condition.
She's coming up to 74 and has had migraines all her life. She and I have been the only regular sufferers from our siblings, 6 of us in all. Mine used to be really bad: visual disturbance, headache, vomiting, sleep, then a gradual recovery over 2 or 3 days. Hers were generally worse than mine, involving disorientation and slurred speech. Both of us have experienced a lessening of symptoms over a long period.
Last week she had a bad one. It started in the early evening, and she went to bed. A couple of hours later her partner checked on her and she was completely incoherent. This worried him, he dialled 111 and the person he spoke to decided she was sufficiently bad to warrant an ambulance. They took her into hospital (Addenbrookes) and conducted tests: they thought she may have had a stroke or a bleed on the brain. The tests, which included a lumbar puncture, showed no stroke or brain bleed, so they sent her home. That was on Thursday.
On Friday they phoned her and said "Come straight back into hospital!" It seems that the lumbar puncture had detected a herpes infection in her spinal fluid and the doctors were worried by the risk of meningitis. Apparently it wasn't the usual chicken pox/shingles version of the herpes virus but I know no more than that. She is now in for a fortnight where she is being treated twice daily with intravenous anti-virals. She has had an MRI scan and that has detected "broken blood vessels" in her brain, but she was no more specific than that. She's pretty bored as she feels fine but can't go anywhere because the hospital has been divided into Covid and non-Covid areas. Her ward is on the ground floor, which is a bit of a pain because if you are in a tower block just looking out the window is very entertaining, especially if you can watch over a fine city like Cambridge, or watch the traffic jams building up on the M11/A14.
Her case has proved sufficiently interesting that she has had some research types coming to see her.
I had a natter with her yesterday and she seemed to cheer up after a call from her baby brother.
Edit: apparently the broken blood vessels could be down to high blood pressure, high cholesterol or old age. She told me she's never been diagnosed with high BP, had never had a cholesterol test and didn't feel old. We agreed that it was weird, being the same age as old people.