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My head falls asleep

Thu, 03/11/2010 - 16:39
It's difficult for me to describe this, but the past few months my head just falls asleep without warning. The reason why I say this is because it feels like when your foot falls asleep. Like the pins and needles and a little numbness and then that cold feeling. Right before, I start to feel extremely sad, like I want to cry. This feeling can last for an hour or more. I'm getting it now and I noticed that my mood is starting to go back up slowly. Sometimes I get pressure on the left side of my head like someone is touching me. it just stays there and I find myself putting my hand up there. Then it will feel like my face drops on one side. It kind of like jell-o. Does anyone get this?

Comments

Re: My head falls asleep

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Thu, 2010-03-11 - 22:40
Hi Newyorkcita, I often get the sensation that my "head falls asleep." Usually it's just one side (more often the right-side), and often the sensation slowly moves in very slow "waves". They generally last from 10 to 20 minutes (sometimes hours) for me, with rare ones lasting a few days. Sometimes they're associated with moderate seizures and/or headaches, and once, periods of numbness with periods of severe headache was related to a life-threatening frontal subdural hematoma over a period of a few weeks. In my childhood, it was most often very short periods of a couple minutes (with always other epileptic symptoms of partial seizures), and the most often diagnosis was that I was "faking" it or I was "possessed" by god or demons. In my last years of university, intense migraines were most often associated with the periods of numbness, and migraines associated with severe clusters of partial seizures then came in a close second. When clusters of partial seizures started to lead to frequent secondary tonic-clonics in my late 30's, epilepsy received the blame for all my symptoms. When Medicade reimbursements were further reduced, my GP called my "painless migraines" seizures that should be treated at an ER, and ER called my "seizures" migraines that should be treated by my GP. A diagnosising neurologist just says to take more AEDs until everything finally stops. I now try to avoid medical practitioners as much as possible, and I just try to stop secondary tonic-clonics with minimal Keppra, and I just try to tolerate everything else without anymore poisonous medications/practitioners. A book with limited preview on books.google, "Migraine" by Robert A. Davidoff (2002), Chapter 4, Unusual Forms of Migraine, Variants, and Equivalents, pp. 68-89 (esp. p. 69 for "episodes of paresthesias of the face et al), goes into a wide address of migraine phenomena (migraine and epilepsy sensation phenomena greatly overlap, with just about the average length of time of the events indicating a difference, without using technical equipment). There also seems to be a recent strong trend for the psychiatric community to subsume all neurological disorders under the rubric "Somantic Symptoms" of "conversion disorder" and blunderbussed into the DSM-V, and to have such treated by New-Age Witchdoctors, or not at all. This won't help the patients, but it will help everyone else's medical budgets. Tadzio

Re: My head falls asleep

Submitted by zealot on Fri, 2010-03-12 - 12:25
New Yorker and Tadzio, I, too, get this unpleasant pins and needles proceeding numbness thing. It often wakes me up from my sleep, I think in the later phases of the sleep cycle. Inside my mouth and my tongue, too. It often extends down my arms and the very upper part of my torso. Then I start twitching and sometimes some weird palsy-like or even raising arm movements like the Queen's wave. When I start twitching I start praying. They are usually, but not exclusively bilateral. Sometimes they alternate sides like water sloshing back and forth in a ship that's taken on water. They are usually preceded by a brief aura of an unpleasant, but unidentifiable emotion. I know they're over for sure if I get the blinky-blinkies. That means I've finished with an Absence Sz. Better Petit Mal than Grand Mal. Sometimes the feeling inside my head is so unpleasant that I start scrunching my face and squeezing the way fighter pilots do to increase blood flow to the brain. I don't know why, but this provides some measure of relief. Post Ictal I end up with an hellacious, migraine-like headache. Sometimes unilateral, sometimes not. Sometimes that switches. Post Ictal or more szs? They start as CPs, but they don't stay that way. I have Focal Szs that start in my TL(s). They don't often stay there. I never quite know how one is going to go. Will it be naughty or nice? I am a poster child for DSM bashing. In the latest attempts to discredit me the State have added Delusional Disorder to the already impressive list of Axis II name calling. I've been saddled with Hyoochondriasis by Drs. seeking to discredit my extensive medical and scientific knowledge. Oh well. Baruch Hashem. Zealot

Re: My head falls asleep

Submitted by LemonHead on Sun, 2010-04-11 - 14:41
I had the same experience (maybe not to the degree as some other people have expressed), but I freaked out and was like, "Ohmigosh, now my seizures have evolved to something else!!" I asked my neurologist about the head tingling thing...and he told me that it's because of a pinched nerve.  He told me that he gets the same way if he was in the barber's chair.  I would also wake up with that sensation and wonder if I had a seizure in my sleep.  I was just conscious of head movements for awhile and sleeping on a "good" pillow and I've been fine.      

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