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Should I push for testing?
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 19:58My dad has suffered from complex partial seizures for several years. Around 1991 an MRI revealed an unknown spot on his temperal lobe during an evaluation for an unrelated issue. At the time he was not experiencing seizures of any kind and nothing was done converning this spot. Fast forward to 10 years or so later and he started to have these little "flutters" as he would call them, but never took action on them to find out if it was anything serious. Around 2006 he started to have what would later be diagnosed as complex partial seizures. He would be in the middle of a conversation or a task, get a confused look on his face, and start asking questions about where he was, if he had to work that day, etc..This would go on for about a half an hour or so, at which point he would usually get sick, vomit, and get extremely tired and go to sleep. When he'd wake up he was fine. It was eventually determined that the abnormal electrical activity was originating from this same spot seen years earlier. It was controlled successfully with medication until this past year when bleed through seizures started to occur. After several medication adjustments without success and tests to determine if it could be removed, surgery was performed a couple of months ago. This spot was described at about the size of a pack of cigarettes. The information that was passed on to me was that he was born with this defect and it had to do with the migration of brain tisuse(neurons maybe) during brain development.
This brings me to my question. Our personalities are very similar. We both have had anxiety and stress issues and I believe the location of his spot could have always played a role in that, but I'm not an expert. What I want to know is if I should push my care provider to test with an MRI and EEG to see if there is any chance I could have a similar developmental issue as well before any symptoms may emerge. He was in his mid 30's when this spot was found originally and about 50 when the seizures started happening. Should I be concerned about myself?
Let me ask a question. If
Submitted by just_joe on Mon, 2014-08-04 - 11:55
Let me ask a question. If your father had a deformed hand from birth would you be having tests to see if your hand might get deformed??? If he came up with a heart ailment would you automatically want tests to see if your heart might get the ailment? The deformation if that was what it was happened during his growth in his mothers womb. As for all we know she could have fallen and the area his head was in been hit. SO that area might have gotten a hemmorage which can cause scared brain tissue. Yes scared brain tissue can cause epilepsy. My diagnosis was just that in the 1960's the tissue could have happened before or after birth back then. Discuss this issue with your PCP. He would probably not want the etsts unless you had issues. If you start to have issues then yes discuss it with your doctor. If you have no issues then relax and live your life as you have been.