Panic attack versus seizure

A very interesting topic. I had to fight a judge to qualify for disability benefits and distiguish the difference between just a panick attack and a seizure. There is a huge difference. A panick attack, if you're trained, can be subsidded and calmed down. You can't stop a seizure! However, I do seem to get jumbled panicked thoughts right before seizures. Almost as if all my stressors got thrown at me all at once with no order what-so-ever and my brain can't sort it out. My brain starts thinking about negative stressors rapidly and randomly before I can even process them for about 30 seconds before I have a seizure. It sucks. It helps having my seizure alert/response dog around because I wasn't even aware of it until he started alerting me and I had to lie down for 10 minutes before it would come waiting it out until I had a seizure. I would notice I would get panicked for no reason and he would have to literally lie over me to keep me calm until the whole spell was over and I was okay to get up. I wish there was more awareness on this topic because I thought I was alone with this and felt sort of embarrassed. I appreciate being able to read this thread. :)

I was so happy to find this post. It was only last year that got diagnosed with a seizure disorder/epilepsy. I initially went to my psychiatrist discussing my panic attack symptoms and was prescribed xanax which only seemed to make things worse. In fact whenever, I'd read the generic name on the Rx bottle, it would almost trigger one of these events. I've suffered with mental health issues since I was a teenager. I grew up in an abusive environment. My step-mother used to point out my gayness by calling me the F word repeatedly for about 8 years, among other things. I was hospitalized for suicide attempts/major depression twice but still but back into the same home. Anyway, I'd told my family about certain odd things I'd experienced, some things I didn't talk about for fear of being labeled crazy. I recall several times as a young teen or around that age, lying on my right side watching tv with my head proped up on my arm. Suddenly, I would get the oddest sensation of all the blood from the left side of my body draining into the right side closest to the floor. I'd get pins and needles, my vision would go, and i'd have to lie on my back to recover as I lost strength. I even went to see a doc about this and it was dismissed as nothing real. Once I stayed up to read a book that was due the following day. I only got so far and then I woke up in the morning, but my eyes were already open, and I was still in the same position. Weird. Another time, I remember falling asleep in the living room with my two step brothers, but I was still somehow conscious of everything that was going on, what they were saying, etc...Weird. Another time, I had a picture of Jesus that fell off the wall, but it looked as if it had thrown off the wall a couple of feet before falling rather than just falling. Another time, during a lightning storm while I was in the house, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up and I fell to the bed as I could have sworn that lightning came into my room and just narrowly missed me. When I was even younger in elementary school, I used to get this weird smell sometimes out of the blue that smelled like a musty old carpet or something. It burned my nose, it was so odd. then it would be gone. Again while I was a teen, I had a seizure sitting at the dining room table while my step-mother was screaming at me during dinner. That was her favorite time to really let me have it. I remember starting to shake, my arms and my head and neck and my dad grabbed me and brought me to the floor asking if I was alright. Another time when I was sick with a touch of pleurisy, I had a dream that someone had hidden my asthma inhaler and I started to panic and woke up. I went to look for it upstairs (my bedroom had been moved into the basement) but couldn't find it. I grew increasingly more panicked and remember calling up to my Dad and stepmonster to call the ambulance. I was walking in the kitchen and all I can remember is my legs giving out on me and I fell face first onto the floor. When I was a little kid, the door of my sister's bf opened up as we drove away from a party and I fell out of the car onto the road again face first. Another time in elementary school, I went to kick the kick ball during recess and managed to roll my entire weight onto the ball with my foot which cause me to fall backwards onto the cement and hit my head and black out for a minute. They kept me awake to make sure i didn't slip into a coma. I was always getting into trouble for turning on the tv during my sleep. I had a series of dreams that were so disturbing to me that I would wake myself up screaming with my hands on my face shaking my face telling myself to Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! As a boy I also remember going to bed one night, I turned off the lights and hopped into the bed next to my older brother who was snoring beside me. I suddenly heard my name being called repeatedly from the opposite side of the room which caused me to freeze in terror for a minute or so. When I was able to move, I jumped up and turned on the light, but no one was there and my bro was still asleep. I used to get very faint and pass out sometimes. I remember my eyes rolling up in my head and the teacher grabbing me from falling to the floor. When I was teen, my migraines started, I would get violently ill, vomiting, floaters in my eyes, couldn't stand light or noise, couldn't get off the floor basically writhing in pain with the most intense throbbing pain in my head like someone was taking a knife pick to it with each and every heart beat. They would completely exhaust me, but after I'd vomited and rested a bit, I felt renewed and thankful that my prayers for death had not been answered. The imitrex injection I tried once only made it that much worse...I felt like I was being scalped. I learned to control the migraines mostly with stress management, massage, essential oils, and lots and lots of advil at the start of one because the migrapap and fiornal were just too much fun. I've had many REM behavior disorder acting out events in my sleep where I've injured myself, or my partner, or just found myself completely panicked and unable to utter a word...only waking myself up by finally being able to scream in the real world. About two years ago, I started taking anti-hiv drugs which made everything worse. I had to switch meds to Truvada and Issentress because Atripla was just too disgusting to deal with all the side effects. Unfortunately, while the side-effects seemed to subside with the med change up, the 'episodes' seemed to become more frequent and more intense. Until, I had 12 of them in 4 days. I woke up around 9 pm and was unable to figure out why it was so dark outside. I'd slept through the entire day. My back was sore and my calves were very sore. I'd bitten my tongue on both sides. I knocked on my neighbors door who is a doc and asked him what he thought about it and he said they sounded like seizures. I finally got my pcp to refer me to a neurologist after a couple of visits. The EEG showed normal, the MRI showed I'd had a chronic lacunar infarction in the right hemisphere of my thalamus deep in my brain. She prescribed me Keppra at 1000mg 2x a day. Almost immediately my symptoms of deja vu, jamais vu, vertigo, nausea, light headedness, intense fear, feeling that an evil presence was in the room with me (I actually saw it once), and the need to lie down on my bed in the fetal position til it departed often crying a bit out of utter hopelessness and needing to take 4 hour long naps, well those symptoms got about 80 per cent better right away. My memory is not what it used to be. I can remember faces of people I see all the time, but sometimes I have to search and search and occassionally will have to ask them what their name is again. Kind of embarrassing. I still have twitches from time to time. they seem to be deep muscular ones or my left index finger will twitch uncontrollably for a time, but that overwhelming sense of fear has mostly gone. And I never want to experience it again! I still sometimes feel like I'm going into one of the seizures, but its as if they just skim the surface rather than sinking into the abyss of epilepsy. I forgot to add that there have been at least four times where I was high on pot during my twenties and would start to feel a bit 'off', have a panicky feeling. My eyesight would go black like seeing through a tunnel, my heart it seems would slow and my blood pressure would fall. I've gotten up to get out of the house before and couldn't figure out how to open a door at the top of the stairs and fallen face first down the stairs...People there have had to pick me up and carry me somewhere to recover, my heart would be pounding. Or I'd just collapse on the street while walking with friends. Its pretty embarrassing/humiliating because nobody knows what's going on and I can only wonder if I'm going to die from one of these attacks. Upon looking into my family medical history, I find it riddled with epilepsy on my Mom's side. They side I was mostly kept from growing up. Three of my sister's 4 kids had some form of epilepsy, a brother of mine is hyperreligous, and has aggressiveness and anger issues. Another brother seems to blank out and stare a lot. I find it do that too, but its the least of my concerns. My Grandmother had tonic clonic seizures and I've been told sometimes that she'd see fires burning in the fields when there weren't any. Some aunts and uncles have similar issues, or there is schizophrenia. Its all very confusing, but the more I delve into it, I'm thankful that I pursued this line of investigation because you can only take so much of being labeled crazy, feeling like a pariah, or having doctors misdiagnose or dismiss your complaints.