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dissociation/absence seizures/eeg/psych

Fri, 04/07/2006 - 13:46
dear all. hope its ok for me to sign up here. i couldnt see any rules. only ive not been diagnosed epileptic. My psych is sending me for an EEG and i wanted to find out more about it. I get 'lost time' and 'funny feelings!' sometimes before hand and hes concerned from what ive described that it might be abscence seizures. Before i got too unwell I was on an allied health professional degree course and we had to learn about absence sezures then. we watched a video of a girl having a seizure and i said... she looks like shes dissociating but i remember at the time trying to research and it seems like there was something different about mine. My spells tend to last longer. like 20 minutes to 2 hours. Sometimes i can feel myself going and sometimes not, i just 'wake up' but its not the same as 'waking up' sometimes i dont even realise i've been away until I look at the clock and see i have totally lost all track of time. I started tracking when these episodes occurred and i noticed some patterns. Happens when im reading or sodukoing (a number crossword which i love!) mostly. happens when im tired or hungry. The 'episodes' started getting life impairing three years ago at around the same time I went on 'zopiclone' a sleeping tablet. Ive recently come off the sleepers and my episodes seem to be getting less frequent. imo i think these episodes are just dissociation but my psych is struggling so much and is fighting so hard against giving me a diagnosis of DID (coz hes 60 odd, english and subsequently doesnt believe it exists) Anyway so im going for an EEG to see what that shows up. I think this is like when i was a kid and i had to have a MRI coz they thought I had a brain tumor coz I was switching and stuff I wasn't giving out the typical presentation of being 'anorexic' (which >I was but >we werent) I mean Im grateful the docs taking it seriosuly and looking in to it but....i dont exactly expect it to show anything.... Does anyone have any research... anyone thought it was something else and then been totally surprised that it was epilepsy? lovies G

Comments

Re: dissociation/absence seizures/eeg/psych

Submitted by gateway on Fri, 2006-04-07 - 14:01
oh ok. this is pretty interesting. i was just reading something else and i didnt like to mention but it seems this might be related. when they started getting worse a few years ago. like every time i had a shower i'd lose time. After those i always wake up curled on the floor.. to the extent that i had to change my routine to shower in the evenings rather than the mornings because i wasnt making it to lectures on time. Since then umm sounds gross but i dont shower so much simply because i find it too triggery. (If i just wash then it doesnt happen) ummm so just thought id add that in. Seems like im opposite to a lot of people. I'm saying to my psych its just 'mental' and other people are like 'its sz'. oh well we are all different thats wot makes the world so interesting!! haha. any ideas?

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