Hi - here's a little history. About 6 months ago my daughter (12yrs old) had an unexplained episode. Apparently, she had eaten quite a bit of her halloween candy...

This is what we experienced. She was FULLY conscious but nearly unresponsive, walking around but unable to carry on a conversation. Her eyes and facial expressions were as if she was off in a different world. We had not a clue what was happening. We reminded her of her chores (folding clothes), she sat on the couch folding a single towel over and over and over. I asked her to do simple things such as putting the milk away, instead she got out a bagel. Completey confused, yet unaware of the things she was doing. I got so worried that I eventually took her to the emergency room. They began all the tests, checking for all the normal things but mainly looking for hallucinagens thinking she had gotten some halloween candy that was laced with something. Everything negative, negative, negative. MRI, CT, negative. Yet her altered mental state continued for a total of 10 hours. She fiddled with things while at the hospital, almost in a trance. To get her attention I'd have to get right in her face and call her by name and she'd go immediately back to picking & fiddeling. There were moments that she had better clarity. At times she knew I was mom, other times she couldn't remember her own name.
Finally around 2am in the morning (we were still at the hospital) she sat up and said, "Mom, WHERE ARE WE?!?!?" She was freaked out and had NO recollection of anything that had happened. I asked her the normal questions, what is your name, how old are you, what school do you go to, what are your brother's names etc. Most of which she was able to NOW answer except her brother's names she said she knew she had 2 brothers but couldn't remember right now. Our expensive trip to the ER brought no resolution. Only a doctor that was SURE that she had taken something over the counter - too much cold medicine is what he put his money on. Crazy thing though, she was home all day with her dad. Pretty sure she didn't sneak and O.D. on benadryl.

They watched her through the night and said they had no answers, sorry... come back if it happens again.

Well, it happened again - just this past Sunday not quite as extreme this time though. The Saturday before we had kind of a crazy day where her sugar intake was more than usual. Sunday morning she slept extremely late, nearly 11am when I hadn't seen her yet I went to check on her. She began exhibiting the same symptoms (again, not quite as extreme but still weird.) She was unable to carry out simple tasks, in a daze, hard to get her attention of to get her to do anything, fidgety. Patting things, blowing on things. The whole episode again lasted around 10 hours. She woke up and the next morning back to normal and once again has no recollection of the episode.

We went back to the doctor, (a different one) as I didn't like the cold medicine thing. Here's the plan with the new docotr, we've scheduled a glucose tollerence test to check for insulin resistance/diabetes.

Oooh, one thing I didn't mention is we started taking notice after the November episode that there are times that she will blank out while you are talking to her. She will blink/swallow and kind of lift her chin a little bit and then she'll say, "Hunh, what?" or "What did you say mom?". I asked other family members if they had ever noticed it and all said "Yes, but we just thought it was just something funny that she did."

So here are my questions -

1) Can a spike in blood sugar trigger a seizure? The two common denominators with both episodes was increased/excessive sugar intake.

2) If these are seizures why 10 hours of altered metal status? Is that normal?

3) If the little bouts of blank outs are small seizures are they escalating into these larger episodes.

I plan to request a referal to a nuerologist but wanted to have another view.

Thanks in advance for any info/help.

C Laird

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