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Question about Attention Span

Fri, 10/02/2015 - 14:46

My daughter is now 7 and had her first seizure at 5 and we are on our third medicine change. She is now on Lamictal and so far it has been keeping the seizures at bay. I was just wondering if any other parent has noticed a very short attention span or inability to stay focused in school. I have had several conversations with her teacher and we recently had to up her medicine because her levels were to low in the blood work. 

Comments

Medications and dosages need

Submitted by just_joe on Sat, 2015-10-03 - 20:57
Medications and dosages need to be watched. A medication or dosage that works for one person may not for the next simply because each person is different. Now once on meds they also need to be watched because the therapeutic level might be just high enough to stop a seizure but if her weight gain was X# of lbs, it could have brought it down just enough to cause a breakthrough seizure.While changing from a kid to a teen I grew about 8 inches in height and gained 55 lbs. Doc had my dosages changed 4-5 times in about 9 months. After that I had no problems.

We have several issues with

Submitted by kristicain12@gmail.com on Tue, 2015-10-13 - 18:05
We have several issues with attention & ADD is one of the most common comorbidities with epilepsy.  However, there could be several causes of attention issues other than a deficit disorder.  First of all, if your child experiences absence seizures paying attention in short bursts could easily be an adaptive reaction.  Additionally, many medications prevent seizures by slowing down cognitive processing, which is essentially like putting weights on the legs of a runner.  Basic thought processes take more time and energy, causing long spans of focus to become a strain. Finally, my daughter is also on a medicine (Felbatol) that lowers her inhibitions and increases impulsivity which makes distractions much more tempting.  Since all 3 scenarios applied to my daughter at one point, her neuro has put her on Strattera to help her focus in school without giving her a formal ADD diagnosis due to so many other variables in the mix.  Most ADD meds do lower seizure thresholds significantly but Strattera does not and we have seen many benefits of it at home and at school. Not that I'm advocating to add extra meds to the mix, that was just something that was appropriate for our daughter's situation, but other kids may be dealing with similar challenges.

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