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Night jerks after craniotomy

Wed, 01/17/2018 - 04:27
My fiance had her first known seizure, a grand mal, five weeks ago in her sleep. We went to the ER and they found a fairly large meningioma which they successfully fully ressected four days later. She's recovering well and is on 1000mg of Keppra twice a day with no observed seizures other than the one pre-surgery. (They did see some seizure activity in the area of the tumor on the pre-op EEG, but dr said another EEG won't show anything useful until her brain is more healed.) Since then when she sleeps she has some limb jerking in her sleep; maybe once every hour or 30 min she goes through a period of individual limb jerks, mostly legs, every minute or so, along with some general leg shifting and restlessness. The jerks are like what people get when they are falling asleep, but interspersed throughout her sleep. It's not strong enough to wake me but certainly noticable while awake. I have recorded it and plan to show it to our neurologist, but our current one is a bit useless and it will be some time before we find and get in to see a different one. I can't tell if it's normal body twitching or if it's seizure activity. I also can't recall clearly if she was always this twitchy in her sleep and I didn't pay attention, if this is new, or if it's intensified since her surgery. Obviously I am now hyper attuned to her every hiccup. She has also become a lighter and more sensitive sleeper, perhaps the restlessness and twitches are coming from that. I'm just so stressed about everything that's happened. I'm having nightmares and I'm scared to let her out of my sight. I'm worried she'll develop seizures now and I know she's scared of it too. Would you say these twitches are possible signs of seizure activity? Thank you for any thoughts, advice, or knowledge.

Comments

I want to add that it's not

Submitted by usullusa on Wed, 2018-01-17 - 04:31
I want to add that it's not sustained twitching. Her foot might jerk and then shell lie still and a minute and thirty seconds later it might be her shoulder or her other leg. As I said, it looks similar to the jerks people often get as they are falling asleep. Likely I wouldn't think twice about it if it wasn't for everything that's happened recently. 

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