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Couple of more questions please?
Tue, 05/02/2006 - 20:31Topic: New to Epilepsy.com
I saw an epileptologist today and he confused me more than my neuro. My neuro said I definately had ep but I wanted a second opinion. The epi was arrogant and just fired a thousand questions at me and I felt like I was on trial. The bottom line was he (the epi) said he didn't know if I had ep cause I said that I felt that I had a couple of absent seizures but I also reported several twitches and muscle jerks that would march up my body. He said it was not possible to have both partial and generalized seiaures so he didn't know whether I was having either one of them. He also said that my seizures vary too much and that every seizure should be the same as the last. Everything I described to him was a symptom of a seizure, they just corssed over according to him. WELL. THEY ARE HAPPENNING TO ME!!! He scheduled me for video EEG for sometime later this year, upped my meds to the max, told me not to drive till the tests proved I didn't have ep, what a jerk!!!
Questions:
1. I've read in several places that a partial can turn into a generalized. True? Isn't this an ongoing philisophical battle between neuros?
2. Are all your seizures, aura's, etc.. always the same?
Thanks to anyone that takes the time to read this and that also has any input.
Comments
Re: Re: Couple of more questions please?
Submitted by Ramblinman on Thu, 2006-05-04 - 19:05
Thanks for your great input!!! Is it possible to have multiple kinds of simple partial aeizures: motor, autononomic, emotional, sensory, visual, auditory, etc....? I seem to have symptoms from each of them. I'm starting to lean towards this whole physchogenic thing. I don't care what's causing my seizures as long as I can find out what it is and just make it stop.
Re: Re: Re: Couple of more questions please?
Submitted by Ramblinman on Thu, 2006-05-04 - 20:52
Well, I've been researching and trying to figure out what the crazy epi meant and I think I may have figured it out. Unfortunately, the answer may me that I am either crazy or a freak of nature. Based on all the symptoms I am experiencing and the descriptions I gave him and then the info I pulled out of the Merck Medical Manual, practically every part of my brain would have to be damaged to have all those symptons. I'm going with the freak of nature. I'm laughing on the outside but crying on the inside cause I don't understand any of this. I just know my body is doing funny things to me. The following is what I pulled from the manual. It lists the symptoms and which lobe is effected in order for those symptoms to occur. I have symptoms in each category. I had them long before I even knew they fell into a category or that epilepsy was not only gran mals or the regular neuro diagnosed me with ep.
Complex Automatic Behaviorisms - Temporal Lobe
Localized Numbness or Tingling - Parietal Lobe (Sensory Cortex)
Localized Twitching of Muscles (Jacksonian Sz’s) - Frontal Lobe
Olfactory Hallucinations - Anteromedial Temporal Lobe
Visual Hallucinations(Flashes of Light) - Occipital Lobe
Is it possible for this many lobes to be affected or is it just contained to one lobe?
Re: Couple of more questions please?
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2006-05-04 - 17:49
Just read your questions and the great responses. Sometimes the problems stem from people using different terms that are not always accurate. For example sometimes people call simple partial seizures petit mal or absence when they are very different. Or brief complex partial seizures that affect awareness only can be mistakenly called absence. That's where the language matters with one type beginning in one area of the brain, and absence beginning on both sides simultaneously. Wonder if would help to take descriptions of what you feel and what others see to next appt rather than using the terms? Include length of time each lasts and whether you are confused or not after the event. Those sxs are key in sorting out different kinds. Good luck ! Epilepsy.com Resource Specialist