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Possible absence seizures in 12-year-old
Sat, 04/22/2017 - 19:30Topic: Parents & Caregivers
Hello. I'm very concerned and found this site. I have a 12-year old son. Over the past maybe 3-4 months, we've noticed a few occasions (maybe 4-5, although I'm not sure), in which he would suddenly zone completely out for maybe 5-10 seconds. He could be in the middle of telling a story, then suddenly stop and look zoned out, and then he'd come out of it and often say, "wait, what?" It's possible it could have happened more frequently, but we haven't personally observed it.
At first we thought he was just distracted or overtired. He has struggled with insomnia for years. He's is an over-achiever, super concerned with academics, and tends to be a worrier. No extreme anxiety, but he tends to have stuff on his mind. The last couple of times, however, we started wondering. And this morning I found out that one of his teachers had observed such an incident.
So of course I start researching, and I came across "childhood absence epilepsy" or "childhood absence seizures." Panic. Then I come across "juvenile absence epilepsy" and "juvenile myoclonic epilepsy," which appear to be lifelong and would mean physical seizures.
He already has a neurologist, who we met years ago to help with his pretty nasty insomnia. I'll call her first thing Monday morning. But holy heck I am SCARED! I'm worried about him emotionally. He's already an anxious kid. I'm worried about him physically (skiing, swimming, someday driving). I'm worried about his long-term life.
I know I'm putting the cart before the horse, but damn. These things sure do look like absence seizures.
A bit of extra info. As a young toddler and sometimes as a younger child, he'd occasionally get a tic. For example, he'd go through a period when he'd blink a lot. Noticeably so.
Anyway, I'm just looking for advice, thoughts, anything.
Thank you!
Comments
if seizures are not properly
Submitted by Amy Jo on Sat, 2017-04-22 - 22:31
if seizures are not properly controlled, driving will be in question- you can't know that now, do not get too far ahead of now.until you know more, swimming alone is not recommended but kids don't usually swim alone. needs someone who knows the risk to pay attention and be able to respond.frankly the bigger danger to kids (IMO) is parents being over protective and limiting kids.
If only we had an actual
Submitted by Elljen on Sat, 2017-04-22 - 22:33
If only we had an actual crystal ball to see what the future brings. Not knowing is brutal when we simply want, more than anything, our children to grow up happy and healthy. I'm sorry you are going through this. To the best of my knowledge, nobody in my family, or my husband's, has/had epilepsy. But who knows? I can tell you that sleep has been brutal for my son, more than ever, simply because school homework is crushing him. I can't stand it. He just started middle school, and there is often so much work that he's up quite late at night. Middle school starts earlier than elementary, so he's had to wake up earlier than in previous years. I know he's not getting as much sleep as he should. And with insomnia, it's not like I can just make him catch up on weekends by getting him to bed earlier. There's no guarantee that he'll fall asleep immediately, or that he won't wake up during the night and have difficulty falling back asleep. Usually reading helps him, but there's no guarantee.Interestingly enough, for the first few months of middle school, although he did have to deal with later nights and early wake-ups, he slept beautifully. He was even too tired to want to read before bed. It's only in the past couple of months that the insomnia has returned, and that's when we began noticing these episodes.
our child's teacher noticed
Submitted by Amy Jo on Sat, 2017-04-22 - 22:31
our child's teacher noticed staring in kindergarten (after which we realized that variety of people had seen episodes in prior year). it wasn't due to absence but lots of people (nurses and docs) assumed thaiwhat it would be. first EEG was shirt, not sleep deprived and unremarkable so one pediatrician said she didn't have epilepsy (typical absence was taken out of equation). second EEG was sleep deprived and ~3 hours long, there were some abnormalities consistent with partial epilepsy. a lot of other complaints turned out to be seizures. few years later we did a 5 day in patient EEG (rapidly took her off meds tho it remains in the system a long time so it just reduced meds in system). the partials had only been reduced on meds although they were starting to reduce in frequency. anyhow, they didn't see a partial but they now started seeing ongoing generalized activity as meds reduced. those were atypical absence and myoclonics. those are definitely controlled with meds right now. seizures can change (so the tic could be relevant), it can also take a few years to know more. we've gone from maybe she'll outgrow them to docs not saying anything (cause poor control is a bad sign) to our current epileptologist saying it's likely she'll outgrow them (absence is genetic, atypical absence is usually bad news but so far cognitive levels only took a brief nosedive and are fine now).