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Fear attacks or seizures

Mon, 11/04/2019 - 14:41
Hello! I'm 33 years old. Since I was 4-5 years old almost every day I have been experiencing fear attacks. They take for 2-3 minutes. Sometimes they are trigerred by loud sounds, flashing lights, blue fluorescent, sometimes words or sometimes different motions. I thought that they are anxiety or panic attacks. Also I had depression for a few years. Two years ago I started to use antidepressant pills (trazodone) for sleep. After my sleep had improved my attacks were decreased. A few months later I changed my psychiatrist because my depression got worse. She said that these attacks are anxiety attacks and started treatment with other pills (venlafaxine and trifluoperazine) in addition to trazodone. My attacks were still rare but stronger and longer than previous ones. A few days ago I changed my psychiatrist again. And when I explain all story he said that they aren't anxiety attacks but epilepsy seizures. He prescribed me epilepsy pills (karbamazepin) and said that venlafaxine pills may cause epilepsy attacks and changed them to duloxetine. This diagnose was sensible and I read a lot about different epilepsy types. But I wanted to go to neurologist and to get his opinion. He made EEG and MRI exams and said that results are all clear. Also he said that he thinks that they are may be epilepsy seizures, but he said that we should wait for three months to start antiepileptic drugs. It was on friday. Now I have some problems... I had attack during MRI, trigged by sounds of MRI. They had to stop exam and start again when it passed. On Saturday I had 4 attacks, one was during sleep. Yesterday I had one attack during sleep and today another one when I was awake. I haven't had so much attacks for a long time. Could MRI have triggered my attacks if they are actually epileptic seizures? Or they are anxiety attacks and were increased because of changing venlafaxine to duloxetine? Should I start to use antiepileptic drugs? I'm very confused. Thank you for reading and comments...

Comments

Your clarification of your

Submitted by Patriotrehab on Tue, 2019-11-05 - 10:39
Your clarification of your events definitely helps and it definitely makes sense why the most recent psychiatrist and neurologist are thinking that they could be epileptic seizures, however PNES often mimics epilepsy and the only way to know for sure when there are no abnormal EEG results and the person has a psychiatric history is to capture an event in the moment while under video EEG (VEEG). Someone from the epilepsy foundation has already responded this morning and offered some helpful information from the website. Based on your original post and your reply to me, I’m also going to advise you of these articles from the website.Photosensitivityhttps://www.epilepsy.com/learn/triggers-seizures/photosensitivity-and-seizuresFocal Aware Seizures https://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-seizures/focal-onset-aware-seizures-aka-simple-partial-seizuresAlso, even though you are “aware” during your events you should not be driving until you have been definitively diagnosed, cleared by your neurologist, and are in compliance with the laws where you live. Some places even restrict driving based on mental health disorders when they have events like this especially because they could be provoked by emergency vehicle lights. 

Hello! I want to update my

Submitted by Ewind on Mon, 2020-01-06 - 15:55
Hello! I want to update my status. So may be it will help those who follow the forum. I started to use Tegretol CR 200 mg (karmabezapin) for two months. I had only a few attacks since that time and they didn't last long. They were a few seconds long. So I think that diagnosis of my new psychiatrist is right and my fear attacks are actually epileptical seizures. Also I discovered that they appeared and took longer during the premenstrual period and so my doctor recommended me to increase pills to 300 mg before and during period. It helps also for now. I hate these seizures so much. I hope I won't have them as long as I'm on medication.

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