Hello!

I posted this same message on epilepsychat, so if you already read it there,
please just press "delete". :-)

I wonder if you all could help me with knowing the right questions
to ask of our neurologist.

My 17 year old daughter has had "episodes" since she was 11 or 12.
Typically, she would say that she felt "weird" and that one hand and
arm were tingling. She would go to bed and sleep for 2-3 hours and
would feel fine when she woke up. This only happened once or twice
a year.

When she was 14, she had similar episode, except that she saw
lights, too. I took her to the doctor that time, and the doctor
said she was probably suffering from migraines. She did not have a
headache. I did read however, that sometimes younger people would
get the aura of migraine without the headache actually developing.

Over the next couple of years she had two incidents where, shortly
after arising in the morning, she felt like her abdominal
organs "dropped", then her vision started to get dark around the
edges and she thought she would pass out. She sat down until that
feeling passed. Thinking this was related to the migraines, I gave
her Excedrin and put her to bed. A few hours later, she awoke
feeling fine.

Once or twice a year, she seems to have a true migraine, where the
aura is followed by a classic migraine headache on one side of her
head, and she is bothered by lights and sounds.

Recently, she has been having trouble whenever she runs. She
feels "out of touch" afterwards and sometimes sees lights. She
hasn't developed a headache after running...just the aura.

Earlier this month, she had a headache that lasted a week and a half
and was having some visual symptoms. She said that at times she
couldn't hold her eyes on one spot; it was as if her eyes had to
move away. I took her to the pediatrician, who sent her for an EEG.

The EEG was abnormal. The report said there was "epileptiform
activity in the left parietal lobe" with "sharp spikes".

Last week I took her to the neurologist for an evaluation, and he
said that most likely her symptoms were due to migraine. He said
that 15% of the population has abnormal EEGs.

What do you think? Have you heard this before (about lots of people
having abnormal EEGs)? Can migraines cause abnormal EEGs? Should I
insist on some kind of brain scan? Should I not worry about the
actual diagnosis since it isn't a really big problem at this time?
Everything I have read about epilepsy seems to talk about seizures
in the temporal lobe. Does the fact that hers are in the parietal
lobe mean anything?

Thanks for any insights you can share!

Leigh


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