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Wondering if son has temporal lobe epilepsy after what he told me.

Mon, 09/02/2013 - 16:04

I'll try to make this brief.  My son is 21 and going through a difficult time with anxiety, OCD with intrusive thoughts.  etc.  He recently told me that he has ALWAYS had visual hallucinations.  I can't remember specifics on auditory hallucinations but I think they have been around for a very long time too. 

We can pinpoint these to his early childhood because one involves a neighbor's house that is no longer there.  In other words, he had the hallucination while the house was there, and years later when the house wasn't there, he remembered his hallucination of there being a field across the street.  When the house was gone and he saw the field, he thought his visual hallucination was a premonition.  He never told anyone about his visual hallucinations because he wasn't bothered by them, thought they were normal, knew they weren't real, thought he had a creative imagination.

Basically, he says that sometimes when he's looking at something the entire view will complete switch briefly to a hallucination.  Let's use the house across the street.  He was standing on our porch watching his father and friend talking.  He can remember the exact conversation they were having.  Suddenly, the house across the street was gone and there was a huge empty field across the street.  It was brief.  He thought it was weird and cool.  Never mentioned it like he never mentioned any of his hallucinations.  A few years later, the neighbor's house burned down because the neighbor knocked over a candle.  When the house was leveled and grass was planted, my son remembered that specific hallucination. 

Three years ago, he asked me if I heard my thoughts.  Apparently he has been asking his friends for years if they heard their thoughts.  They all thought in pictures.  He says he always heard sounds and his thoughts.  We can pinpoint this to early childhood too because he remembers worrying if the babysitter could hear his thoughts when he was little.  He remembers testing it by thinking things to her and she didn't respond.  But I guess three years ago he became disturbed by hearing all of this because he started having intrusive thoughts. 

The reason he told me about his life-long visual hallucinations is because he was experiencing deja vu recently.  He thought his previous visual hallucination of the house was deja vu.  He has also been having feelings of nothing being familiar---but usually when he wakes in the middle of the night and is half asleep.  Looking up deja vu is how I learned temporal lobe epilepsy. 

He has had headaches his entire life.  When he was in 4th grade, his pediatrician ordered an MRI looking for brain tumors.  It was normal. 

I have seen the blank stare multiple times since 9th grade.  I strongly believed that these are associated with anxiety and panic attacks.  I don't remember blanks stares earlier in his life though but my memory isn't as good as it used to be.

My husband and I remember at some time between 1st and 4th grade, we had to replace his TV with a smaller one because it caused some problems.  My husband, not his biological father, has a sister with full fledged epilepsy so he knew right away that my son's experience with the TV wasn't right and switched his TV. 

He recently had a concussion and his psych symptoms have gotten worse.  He may have cerebral fluid leak because clear drainage is in his one ear every morning when he wakes up.  He has an appointment with a neurosurgeon next week to initiate the diagnosis of this drainage.

My main problem is that I don't know where to go from here.  His PCP, who is a highly respected and talented internist, is treating him for his psych issues because my son does not like mental health professionals.  I feel I need to tell his PCP about this, but I think I will sound like I'm going off the deep end researching my son's symptoms.  I'm also fearful that it will be misinterpreted as mental illness without ruling out epilepsy.  My husband thinks I should tell his doctor. 

I haven't told my son.  I didn't make a big deal about what he told me about the visual hallucinations. I just reassured him.  After all, it isn't something that ever bothered him so I don't want to put fears into his mind.  It was more like "thinks that make you go hmmmm..." afterwards and I started trying to find information about it. 

Can anyone relate to my son's experiences here?  Or do I sound completely off track?   

Comments

Re: Wondering if son has temporal lobe epilepsy

Submitted by just_joe on Mon, 2013-09-02 - 22:05

By all means discuss this with his PCP. As for the diary use it and YOU can without telling him. The diary can also give his doctor someh=thing to look at. His experiances sould be Auras but not being a doctor I wll not say they are. Also neurologists and not  doctors that specialize in psycology there are many things that happen in the central nervious system One being epilpesy another alsheimers which is why mant neurologists have dhanged into speclists. What you need to do is used the diary nd not and new experiances and after discussing them bring up others that might be in his past. His head aches could also be types of seizures but I am no doctor. If you don't want him to use the diasr try and ge him to write them down as stories oe essays.

I hope this helps and your PCP can get him looked at

Good luck

Joe

By all means discuss this with his PCP. As for the diary use it and YOU can without telling him. The diary can also give his doctor someh=thing to look at. His experiances sould be Auras but not being a doctor I wll not say they are. Also neurologists and not  doctors that specialize in psycology there are many things that happen in the central nervious system One being epilpesy another alsheimers which is why mant neurologists have dhanged into speclists. What you need to do is used the diary nd not and new experiances and after discussing them bring up others that might be in his past. His head aches could also be types of seizures but I am no doctor. If you don't want him to use the diasr try and ge him to write them down as stories oe essays.

I hope this helps and your PCP can get him looked at

Good luck

Joe

Son has temporal lobe epilepsy after what he told me?

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Tue, 2013-09-03 - 06:07
Hi Missy Muffet, Phraseology for subliminal events is difficult to keep valid and objective. For instance, the vast majority of people use words to think, and in this "thinking", they "hear" these words. "Thinking" in pictures is less common with "thinking" as an "experience" (think of the famous phrase "The ineluctabale modality of the visible"). Thinking in music is heard by the self too; Beethoven "knew music so well he could probably hear it in his head." Also, it is often very easy to "hear" other people think, as in using words to think, there is most always subtle movements and slight sounds of the words being mouthed with the thoughts. This persists even after years of being taught to "read" silently and not to openly voice thoughts. Other forms of "language" for thinking to one's self has this problem also (Clever Hans, the world famous horse, could "hear" it all). Generally, hearing the thoughts is regarded as a problem when the heard words are regarded as coming from another entity that doesn't "exist" as a plausible source; the famous theory of the bicameral mind promoted by Julian Jaynes takes this initial self-relevelation as the origin of consciousness (I like the stance that consciousness with thought is just subtle verbal behaviour (as defined by B.F.Skinner) under the influence, and influencing, the person emitting the behaviour generally restricted as experienced mainly by the emitter). There isn't a mental disorder that epilepsy can't imitate, making proper differentiation very difficult for sloppy doctors. This problem with differentiation can also be seen in the simpler(???) subject of migraines: http://www.migraine-aura.com/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e49268/index_en.html (with failure of differentiation with epilepsy here, just call it migralepsy to minimize any headache of classification, but retain these contrary formatted paramnesias for Déjà vu and Jamais vu???). Tadzio

Re: Son has temporal lobe epilepsy after what he told me?

Submitted by Missy Muffet on Wed, 2013-09-04 - 03:28

I remember researching hearing thoughts three years ago.  It was interesting to learn that people think in pictures, music, colors, etc.  I don't think in pictures but I most certainly don't hear my thoughts in the form of sound like my son does.

I do know without a doubt that he is hearing his OWN thoughts.  I also know that he is aware of what's real and not real.  He isn't believing any hallucinations are real. 

His paranoia extends only to being worried someone will hear his intrusive thoughts.  They get so loud in his head, he has a hard time believing that the sound isn't escaping.  It must be deafening.  Fortunately, they're subsiding on the antidepressant.  I don't think he's had one all week.  And his "worries" (which are different from his intrusive thoughts) have subsided significantly too.   

I've recently learned that migraines can cause many of these things too.  This is where the PCP went a few weeks ago when we were talking about his headaches.  What doesn't make sense is the frequency of his headaches.  I'm just not seeing migraines.   

 

I remember researching hearing thoughts three years ago.  It was interesting to learn that people think in pictures, music, colors, etc.  I don't think in pictures but I most certainly don't hear my thoughts in the form of sound like my son does.

I do know without a doubt that he is hearing his OWN thoughts.  I also know that he is aware of what's real and not real.  He isn't believing any hallucinations are real. 

His paranoia extends only to being worried someone will hear his intrusive thoughts.  They get so loud in his head, he has a hard time believing that the sound isn't escaping.  It must be deafening.  Fortunately, they're subsiding on the antidepressant.  I don't think he's had one all week.  And his "worries" (which are different from his intrusive thoughts) have subsided significantly too.   

I've recently learned that migraines can cause many of these things too.  This is where the PCP went a few weeks ago when we were talking about his headaches.  What doesn't make sense is the frequency of his headaches.  I'm just not seeing migraines.   

 

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