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Absence seizures to Grand Mal
Mon, 06/26/2017 - 11:01Topic: Medication Issues
My daughter was diagnosed with Epilepsy in March of 2017, she is 10 years old. When we visited the neurologist she was diagnosed as an epileptic having absence seizures, which were previously thought to be a.d.d. She was medicated for a.d.d. but we later found out it was more and scheduled with the neurologist. Testing proved that she was having absence seizures. I was t9ld there was only a 5-10% chance that she would ever have a full grand mal seizure, but was given diastate just in case. She is on Zarontin 250/8mL twice daily. Almost 3 months to the day of her diagnosis, she had a grand mal seizure while we were driving down the road on our way out of town. I administered the diastate and she was taken to the hospital because she quit breathing. She is now on Zarontin and Keppra. I am really still very new to this and wondering if this could have been an osolated incident or if I should prepare myself for more episodes. It is truly traumatic to watch your child go through something you cannot control. I am looking for some insight and maybe another parent who I can talk with while going through this new chapter. I am a single mom of 3 and really looking for a support system. Thanks in advance.
Sara
Hi Sara,Many people can have
Submitted by Amy Jo on Mon, 2017-06-26 - 14:08
Hi Sara,Many people can have a tonic clonic as they are associated with both generalized forms of epilepsy and focal forms of epilepsy. Ideally getting a grip on the absences will go hand in hand with no more TCs occurring. Your child is in the early stage where they make a smart guess (based on other people with same seizures) and then tweak things based on how things go. It isn't an exact science, but they usually are good about adjusting things once they have more info so keep your neurologist up to date if something happens. Our 10yo (different kind of absence, different story/history) had an EEG a few months after we shifted her meds to check if absences were controlled (that's the great thing about different absence epilepsies, it can be checked with EEG). If your child hasn't had that or continues to have issues, may be worth asking about. There are other drugs that treat absences, if the current setup doesn't work for any reason. If your child continues to have TCs, ask about possibly using intranasal or buccal midazolam (easier to administer but shelf life is different from diastat, school/504 thing is another aspect to that). So glad you had that on hand! some basic info on absences athttp://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-seizures/absence-seizuressome basic info on TCs at http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-seizures/tonic-clonic-seizures