I am also new here and this is my first posting. Your email caught
my attention because your problems sound almost exactly like mine.

About 1.5 years ago after seeing a neurologist for migraines I was
diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. I currently take only
Depakote, but until recently took that in combination with
Neurontin. I no longr have insurance.

I suffer from complex and simple partials, and although I've had some
simple partials during the day, all of my complex partials happen
soon before falling asleep. My neurologist also thinks I am having
seizures during sleep, but since no one is there to witness then I
cannot be sure.

I am very very interested in hearing about the symptoms of others
suffering from seizures like mine, because they seem so completely
bizarre to me. Not to get into too much detail now, mine normally
begin with a feel of electricity in my brain. This is sometimes
preceded by auditory hallucinations. I then feel as though the
electricity passes down to the rest of my body, I stop breathing, am
unable to move, and sometimes my arm jerks or lifts up toward my body.

During the day I also often experience the deja vu feeling, and
symptoms of depersonalization.

Once I lost the ability to speak or to understand language, and that
seizure lasted nearly 5 minutes. (this was during the day)

Sometimes when I wake in the morning I feel sore (like I've been
jogging) and have a horrible headache. The neurologist believes this
is a result of having seizures during sleep.

My MRI was normal. I have had one EEG that showed seizure activity,
one inconclusive EEG that showed some abnormal spiking, and one sleep
EEG was normal.

Anna

--- In adultswithepilepsy@yahoogroups.com, timmyo_11 <no_reply@y...>
wrote:
> Hi. My name is Tim and this is the first time I have ever posted
> anything in regard to my epilipsy. I've read through many of the
> messages on the site and like most of you I was picked out of the
> crowd to deal with this problem when I was 18 and a freshmen in
> college. I am now 38 and have lived with it for 20 years! For 18 of
> those years I really considered myself lucky as far as epilepsy
> went. I have simple partial seizures and have never once lost
> consciousness or memory of the events. As I was saying
> (writing),these spells ocurred 98% of the time as I was falling
> asleep or during sleep. The seizure is primarily centered in my
> right hand but there is a vocal component sometimes that depends on
> the magnitude of the event. For 18 years or so I tried to get the
> seizures 100% under control by trying numerous medicine combos but
> nothing seemed quite right. This past year though has seen a
> dramatic change. 14 Months ago in an attempt to get the nightime
> spells under control, I swithed med's with complete failure. I
began
> having daytime episodes and have never been able to regain daytime
> control (actually the seizures seem to just have shifted from night
> to day in prominence). I just spent 6 days in the clinic to try to
> pinpoint the focus of my seizure and went through all the normal
> tests. My follow-up is next week but my gut feel is that I will
> remain in the bottom percent of patients where the focus is never
> found and medicines are only somewhat helpful. Who knows. Overall
I
> have a lot to be thankful for through these 20 years.. a great
wife,
> four sons and a good family but I sure would like to live the next
> 20 without the daily fear of having a seizure.
>
> This has gotten kind of long but I would like to hear from anyone
> that feels stress is a trigger for your seizure and whether your
Doc
> has prescribed anything in this regard to minimize the release of
> chemicals associated with stress in the brain. I take 2100mg of
> Carbitrol right now but have been on almost everything through the
> years.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tim