Simple Partial Seizure?

Re: Simple Partial Seizure?

Submitted by Kells621 on Thu, 2012-08-02 - 19:25

These episodes may very well be seizures. When I was younger, I had similar episodes and my doctor sent me to a psychiatrist who told me they were panic attacks and prescribed me with paxil and i continued to have them for several years.... So for a good 3 years I was being told that my seizures were panic attacks. It took me eventually having a tonic clonic seizure several years later for my doctor to order me an eeg....I got lucky because even though I didn't have a seizure during the EEG, they caught a couple of sharps on the eeg. Even though it's a possibility that they aren't seizures, you know yourself best and you know when something isn't right. Don't give up. 24 hours isn't always enough to catch seizure activity. I've had many eegs done where there is no seizure activity but that doesn't mean I don't have seizures. Ask your doctor if you can try the ambulatory eeg again. Change doctors if yours are not fully supportive.

Re: Simple Partial Seizure?

Submitted by jimmieD on Thu, 2012-08-02 - 20:32

hello im 23 ive been having simple partial seizures as long as i can remember but didint know they were seizures until i had a tonic clonic seizure, they gace me an eeg in the hospital an another 1 a couple months ago didnt show much tho. when i have 1 i feel a strange feeling in my stomach which spreads 2 my body, i get cold sweats, i feel like ive been there b4 an everything is so vivid, i used 2 enjoy them b4 i knew wat they were but know i get pretty freaked out like somethin bad is going 2 happen i also chew but there is nothin in my mouth it only lasts about 20 sec sometimes up 2 2 min tho but rarley, i used 2 think it was just deja vu b4 i found out wat they were, its also common 2 have them in ur sleep or like half asleep an  half awake at least thts how i feel, i would maybe change ur nuero an think about meds not 2 scare u but something not so great could possibly happen during ur spell an its something 2 watch out 4 during drivin an wat not. i can understand how u feel bout bein lonley an wat not it sux not bein able 2 have somebody 2 relate 2 bout it. but plenty of people live normal lives wit epilepsy so i would just try an get a diagnosis, but hope this helped a lil an hope things are well

jimmie

Re: Simple Partial Seizure?

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Fri, 2012-08-03 - 06:00

Hi Leah, My strongest seizures usually occur around the middle of a cluster of seizures that have a cluster cycle of about 29.5 days (about the length of the lunar cycle over a long average, but they certainly don't stay in sync with the moon's cycle). In my childhood, the clusters usually were limited to stronger simple partial seizures, with rather unique minor seizures just as I would go to sleep the night before the day with the peak of the crescendo, then lessening a little into the following night, and a day or so of recovery after that. Until my teen years, the simple partial seizures in the clusters were mainly characterized by sensations of intense fear, lasting a little less than a minute, and sometimes, almost three or so minutes. While no hallucinations were involved with my sensations, a classic old B/W S/F horror movie, "Carnival of Souls (1962)(the re-make totally misses the mark), had many emotionally matching scenes implying the similar sensations. Extremely strong aversive Pavlovian conditioning can barely enter the realm of the visceral sensations of the ictus near a crescendo, while away from the crescendo, the sensations are closer to meeting a self-judgemental evaluative match with a verbal labeling (closer to the visceral results from the labeled "The Ludovico Technique" in the fictional movie "A Clockwork Orange" version of strong aversive conditioning). A major long-term problem with uncontrolled frequent simple partial seizures involving the Limbic system, is if the controversial notion of "kindling" is correct, which includes the argument that repetitive seizures can develop conducive pathways leading to more intense and complex frequent seizures over a long period of time. Over decades, my cluster of seizures slowly evolved into more intense complex partial seizures, and after about 35 years, secondarily generalized tonic-clonics during the crescendo grew in frequency, and after 45 years, with frequent near deadly intensity (at the age of 53, I received the label "3 hours to live" from head injuries after clusters of seizures). Some current theories of kindling argue that even minor doses of the newer AEDs can help prevent the occurrence of the kindling of temporal lobe/limbic epileptic seizures. The differential for "Panic Disorder (panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, DSM-IV-TR #300.01, 300.21)" versus epilepsy, of: "Simple partial seizures may occasionally be characterized by a panic attack. Clues to this diagnosis include not only the occurrence, at other times, of other seizure types (e.g., grand mal or complex partial) but also the exquisitely paroxysmal nature of the ictal panic attack: whereas panic attacks in panic disorder take minutes to crescendo, the ictal anxiety peaks within seconds. An EEG may or may not be helpful in such cases, as it may be normal even while the patient is having the seizure,": http://www.brown.edu/Courses/BI_278/Other/Clerkship/Didactics/Readings/panic.pdf seems like a good guide when both "acute repetitive seizures" & "Nonconvulsive status epilepticus" are each totally excluded. Whether my clustered seizures kindled into non-clustered daily seizures with vastly different sensations, may be confounded with the notion of "interhemispheric intrusion", resulting in ecstatic seizures kindled from amygdala events or just the "intrusion" of the intense "fear" amygdala events, but doesn't seem to be muddled enough with memory problems, since amnesia generally doesn't occur for me during strong simple partials (in fact, they seem to have been greatly enhancing to my memory, including the problems with intense deja vu phenomena). Google '"interhemispheric intrusion" "Anterior Commisure"' for the Shakti theory, or, I think, is long video explanation involving temporal lobe epilepsy, deja vu, fear, ecstasy, etc., of Limbic seizures, was moved around to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJIAHHB8Btk "Seizure clustering" by Sheryl R. Haut (Epilepsy & Behavior 8 (2006) 50–55): http://old.epilepsyfoundation.org/epilepsyusa/yebeh/upload/Feb_Haut_art.pdf and a slow downloading "Sudden Onset Panic: Epileptic Aura or Panic Disorder?" by Robin A. Hurley, M.D., Ronald Fisher, M.D., Ph.D., Katherine H. Taber, Ph.D.: http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/NP/3948/06JNP436.PDF Tadzio