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Focal Cortical Dysplasia, No Seizures

Fri, 09/11/2015 - 09:37

Topic: Living With Epilepsy - Youth

My daughter is 10 years old. Since she was around two she's had behavior issues. She has been diagnosed with ADHD, ODD (she's now outgrown this), anxiety, and has OCD tendencies. The medications she is currently on for these issues has helped very much! In the past 7 months she has fainted or had a seizure twice. The "episodes" were 3 weeks apart. Doctors are not sure if they were fainting or seizures. The looked to be fainting episodes, but she had an EEG which the results came back abnormal. If I understand correctly, the results showed she was a high risk for seizure activity. After being re-evalutation by neuropsych, it was suggested due to having average intelligence and low memory scores that she get an MRI. I requested she get an MRI done. After the MRI, she has been diagnosed with Focal Cortical Displasia on the right frontal lobe. She is FCD type II. Due to her new diagnosis the doctors can't say her episodes are for sure fainting, but they aren't comfortable saying they were seizures at this point either. I've been trying to educate myself on FCD, and find myself getting confused. All the research and information I am finding are on children with seizures. She has test results that support her diagnosis, but no symptoms. Has anyone else had a child who was diagnosed with FCD type II, and stayed seizure free? Or is it rare that she has no symptoms? I have concerns she may be having seizures I am not noticing, but being ADHD her spacing out for a couple seconds is hard to distinguish. As of now it appears there are no signs of seizures. Any experiences or suggestions would be appreciated!

Comments

I have same thing with my son

Submitted by Hasnaa on Tue, 2017-07-25 - 19:09

I have same thing with my son god help you're

Hi I was wondering if I can

Submitted by wilkesu11 on Sun, 2018-08-19 - 13:50

Hi I was wondering if I can ask you some questions about symptoms and behavioral issues that your son has had. Mine is almost 8 and has all the same things that you mentioned above. Im on Facebook as Sarah Kopko DeFrancesco. If you don't mind me asking a few questions can you please PM me

Hi Mom, I hear you. My 9 year

Submitted by hopefulmama on Tue, 2019-03-19 - 09:24

Hi Mom, I hear you. My 9 year old daughter started to have fainting-like episodes about once a month for almost a year, witnessed by the Girl Guide leaders. From what they told (she was playful but suddenly dropped and black out for few seconds, came back normally, no confused or hazed), our Neurologist couldn't diagnose what it was because her 1st deprived sleep EEG test came back normal . We didn't want / or maybe we were scared to think of they are seizures/ epileptic symptoms. Until we found out she laid on the floor half conscious, lethargy, we called 911, she was in ER, she threw up, she had blood test and ECG this time, Pediatric suspected she had heart problem because of ECG showing a slight long interval QT. She then refered to Cardiologist. We had a whole day doing all kind of tests and she carried the HOver for 24 hours. The result of her heart was NORMAL (the slightly long interval QT happened after someone throwing up) We went back to square one, back to our neurologist. It's very frustrating because he still not concluded anything. The fact when we found her laying on the ground, we actually missed the very first few minutes which probably was a seizure. UNTIL 2 months later, she was playful then she dropped and had a convulsion front of us. Now she is diagnosed with Epilepsy and it explains all the fainting episodes. As one of the moms mentioned already, the fainting might be a start and progress to a seizure. She is now on 75mg Lamotrigine and will have 2nd EEG and MRI in couple months.It was terrible when we knew the diagnose. I couldn't deal with it, thinking her life would be badly effected and she would not be able to do whatever she wants. I was feeling completely devastated. However thanks to joining this forum, reading people's stories, it has helped a lot. There is a very good chance she will out grow and usually when science advances. the anti-epileptic drugs will work better. Have faith and enjoy her every moments when you can!

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