Looking for answers.

Welcome Ramblinman - When I was first diagnosed I joined an E (epilepsy) forum and it was the smartest thing I did. I doubt many of us can rely on our doctors to tell us all medically we have questions about nor give us the support and help we need in our daily life's adjustment to this. I had even raised a child with epilepsybefore I was diagnosed. I can't believe how ignorant I was all those years. I was diagnosed after him. When I was first diagnosed I was plagued with Deja Vu. I had it all the time. That is a simple partial seizure - a TLE. A petit mal is now more commonly called an absence sz at least in the US, which is a generalized sz in origin. THere are some excellent definitions on this site. I'd advise you read those too. A feeling of deja vu can be isolated, IOW you have that, which is a simple partial seizure and it stops there. Or a simple partial sz can be an aura to a more profound seizure is how I call it for lack of knowing HOW to call it. A forewarning of another sz type to follow. I get both. Simple partials can manifest themselves in so many ways I couldn't even count them. For me when I have deja vu? An example would be I'll be reading a book, read a paragraph or sentence and I KNOW I just read it. It's a very firm feeling. But I haven't. Another example for me, and this one is irritating, I'll be on the phone speaking with maybe one of my children? I feel like all of the conversation we're having has already been said. The problem for me with that is, I get tangled up in the conversation for some reason. Usually then I'll tell them I'm having deja vu and give it up until it passes. For me? I don't get, I don't think, the feeling the same thing has happened as far back as you do. Actually? I'm not real sure. Don't take this as hard information. I cna't even remember now who told me this, so it might be wrong too but I think it's possible enough, an interesting theory to pass along. I was told once that deja vu is caused by this: you receive input into your brain that your brain is going to store. All receiving information first goes to short term memory, and if kept, then is shuttled to long term memory. In deja vu the information in putted first is put in long term memory, that's wrong, so it's shuttled to short term memory and then back to long term memory. IOW the brain perceives the same information in a different part of the brain twice or more in a rapid sequence. This gives the impression you've thougohth or experienced the same thing twice or more. That makes a lot of sense to me but again I'm not sure that's true. I think my son's pediatric neurologist told me that some years ago. My epilepsy morphs all the time. Like I had deja vu all the time for about 2 years. It really drove me nutty. Then I nearly quit having them at all for several years and I started having another kind of simple partial - phantom smells. Overwhelming smells, not pleasant ones either of things that weren't there. These smells BTW are always of something you've smelled before. First it was burning chicken feathers for about a year. I grew up on a farm and we had a large poultry operation among other things so burning chicken feathers, being a very distinctive smell too, was very familiar to me. It changed to beer and I've never been a drinker so beer was not a common smell I'd experienced, yet I have smelled beer before. The last one I had was "basement". As in mildew, dusty, musty smell. The REALLy weird thing about "basement" was that a few times I swear it kicked up my asthma as going into a mildew, dusty basement would. Talk about power of suggestion! I had that for several years. Right now? I haven't had that for awhile. But of course now I've switched to something else. Here's another example of how my E morphs and I think a lot of ours do. I get complex partial seizures, a TLE seizure. When I first started getting those I'd be very agitated. If anyone tried to touch me I was told I got extremely combative. I always got them early evening. Now? I get one about every 2 weeks. Always when I'm asleep and I do one of two behaviors. One of them I'm told I sound frightened, I talk loud too but I stay put. The other I'm crashing around the house in the middle of the night, talking, sounding anguished. When my husband redirects me, or sits with me until it's over? I can't remember it, except for maybe a few little fragments, like a dream memory but that disappears very quickly for me. I'm also very mellow now. Thankfully for him. My son stays in place where ever he is and does automatisms, or repetitive predictable things with his face and hands. My dog has epilepsy, has CPs among other sz's and she has automatisms too. My daughter's CP's? Are absolutely terrifying for her. She is, thankfully, controlled at this time but before she was diagnosed, I think this lasted for about a year, she thought literally she was loosing her mind. She wasn't. She had epilepsy with CPs that made her feel that way. Even when she called me and said what she was going through I worried she was having mental health problems. This is a nutty world but you are certainly not alone. I think there are no dumb questions so ask away. You'll find I think that the world we dwell in, the epileptic world, has very kind people populating it. People want to help others. It's a hard journey though but you'll make it. See? We all are still chugging along! Good luck new friend. It is a hard adjustment but you will make it one day at a time. Gretchen

G'morning, Ramblinman. I have had deja vu as the most common manifestation of my TLE for a few years now, though I didn't know it was epilepsy til I had a grand mal in late March and went to a neurologist. Before I started taking Keppra, I used to get deja vu at least once a week, and sometimes several times in one day. I always associated it with sleep deprivation ("Man, i gotta get some rest"), but frankly had no idea that other people don't get deja vu that often. My deja vu episodes tend to be pretty intense, and often start with an indescribable feeling in my stomach, sometimes ringing in my ear. Then everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) seems like I've done it before. I remember the room I'm in, what that girl or guy is wearing, how they are standing or sitting relative to me, what they say, what I say, etc. If it's a "lengthy" deja vu, I sometimes remember thinking "I'm having deja vu". One feature my "episodes" have is that I always know it's deja vu; I am never confused or thinking "have I really experienced this before?" And then it's suddenly over and everything is normal. I read a theory somewhere that deja vu is where your hippocampus, which is supposed to file new experiences in short term memory in real time, then sort them into long term memory as needed, gets all confused briefly and starts filing your new experiences straight into long term memory. That makes them seem like recollections, even though it's brand new. After a bit, the hippocampus recovers and starts doing its job right again. As the hippocampus is heavily implicated in lots of TLE activity, it seems plausible to me. Good luck, and no, none of it makes sense, really. --juperee