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Paralyzed but consious

Mon, 03/19/2007 - 13:34
Hello! A little bit of history…. I am 26 years old now. I had epilepsy when I was younger but seemed to have grown out of it. I had 3-4 grand mals when I was between 8-10. I was on medication until around 19-21. Last night I had one of the “dreams” which I believe is an aura. I have had a very few of these in the last 7 or 8 years, maybe a total of 3. Last night’s seemed to be scarier than the others though. When I was young, my seizures happened as I was falling asleep. Last night I slept on the couch from about 10pm to 3am then moved to the bed where one of my dogs woke me up at 4 to go out. When I got back to bed and started to fall back asleep, I started to go into a “heavy” (heavy because my whole body starts to feel heavy as I dream) dream. When I go into what I believe is an aura dream, I don’t pass out, I actually become conscious mentally but cannot move physically. It’s as if I am fighting with the dream state. I find that if I can move, or say something then I snap out of it. But when I’m paralyzed like this I can’t speak, maybe just whisper… and I can hear myself starting breathe heavily. I had my hand around my boyfriend’s arm and I tried to squeeze so that he could wake me up but he was sound asleep. Finally I was able to mutter the words “help me” so that I could hear... then I woke fully up and snapped out of it. I could still feel the adrenalin flowing and my heart pounding. When this happens I often have to stay awake for a little bit or when I drift back to sleep I will enter this state again. The thing that is different about today is that I have continued to feel emotionally disturbed and physically off. I can move fine, but I don’t feel like my brain is quite talking to my body like it normally does. I’m waiting to see if this goes away. I will also mention that within the last year or so I have had a LOT of problem with forgetting words. I will be in the middle of a conversation and the next word I am about to say will just disappear. I can picture it… I can describe it… but I can’t remember it. I just thought maybe my diet was off but after reading here, I am wondering if it isn’t more than that. Has anyone had anything similar to this? If so, what did you find that it was? I haven’t decided whether or not I should worry about this enough to see a doctor again.

Comments

Re: Paralyzed but consious

Submitted by spiz on Mon, 2007-03-19 - 22:30
I've had the same happen to me. My now retired neuro said they were a type of simple partial but my doctor of years said they were night terrors. Either way they are terrifying! Take care! -Spiz

Re: Paralyzed but consious

Submitted by keyvin on Thu, 2007-03-22 - 02:42
These aren't sleep terrors. I don't know if they are auras. I've had this happen many times before. My dad has too. Its called sleep paralysis, and it is a result of your mind waking up while your body is paralyzed for REM sleep. Its incredibly scary! Sometimes I could hear people talking around me if I had taken a nap in a public place. I've had it happen with my head lying on my fiance's lap. All she noticed was I started moaning (what woke me up), and that I was breathing a little heavier. Even crazier is if it happened when I was supposed to be waking up for school. I would know that I wasn't awake, and I would try to scream, talk do anything to get up. What would normally happen is that I would think I was up (I would be doing things like walking to the bathroom to get in the shower, or getting dressed), but it would take me awhile to realize that I was still dreaming! I actually missed a psychology test in college because of this. They didn't even count it as an excuse :( I used to really really sweat it. I would hate to go to sleep for days afterwords. Two things have really helped decrease how scary it is. Know that your best bet is to try to moan - not talk. If you think you are talking you are still dreaming. Moaning takes a lot less effort. The second is to know that in this state you can have amazing vivid dreams, and you should take the opportunity to try to have one if you can't wake up. In one, I learned how to fly by jumping and hanging in mid air :) On the flip side, the single scariest moments of my life have occurred like this too. A giant spider on the ceiling, a walking reaching shadow that dissolves into slug like things that try to crawl down your throat and nose, a freaking alien leaning over me. Your trapped and unable to move... Until you can spring out of bed and scare the crap out of your significant other. If you want to avoid them altogether (see bad dreams above), there were two things that worked for me. Never, ever let yourself get sleep deprived. The second was sleeping on my side. before I posted this, I read some more on it. It could be a symptom of epilepsy. If your having these and your getting a solid 8 hours of sleep a night, go to the doctor. On a non medical forum I post on, the rule of thumb is that if you have to ask random people on the internet, you should go to the doctor.

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