EEG and Seizures

julierose24

New Member
This was something that came up in my last thread, and wanted to start a new post because I'm a little worried.

My daughter had an EEG recently (to rule out seizures). Her birth father has a seizure disorder, but I don't know more than that. She laid there PERFECTLY for the EEG. Did everything they asked (I was shocked. really.). Even FELL ASLEEP when they asked her to (she has sleep issues).


The chief of neurology called us in for the results. He asked us if she ever stops and spaces out for a few seconds at a time while blinking. He said this would be several times each day. My husband and I haven't ever noticed this. He said that since she isn't doing this, then it's probably nothing to worry about.


She does however get angry and defiant a lot. Her mood changes all the time to grumpy, angry. Could this be seizure behavior?

Where do I go from here? Any advice/experience is appreciated.
 

JJJ

Active Member
Yep, the raging can definitely be seizure related. It took a long time for me to convince others that the rages were related to seizures (I knew Tigger had seizure years before we were able to catch them on an EEG. ) Tigger did not have the spacing-out either. Finally, about 3 years ago, we finally caught the seizures on an EEG and they were ale to determine what type and we were able to medicate him correctly. He is now off almost all of his psychiatric medications because the Lamictal has made that big of a difference for him.

If she has seizures, stimulants could make them worse.
 

buddy

New Member
I answered in your other thread....but I think it is important to consider...even if not defined as a "seizure " the results show something is going on and not all people experience seizures the same. What part of the brain had the activity? Maybe research seizure symptoms online. Even looking up those areas of the brain under terms like ... brain injury to temporal lobe ...or function of frontal lobe etc. A neuropsychologist could really help put the puzzle together.
 

Methuselah

New Member
I remember reading something a long time ago linking mini seizures and bipolar disorder, rapid cycling, I think. It is why anticonvulsants seem to help some bipolar patients. I'd goggle it for you, but I am not place to search. I hope you can find help for your daughter.
 

Amelia G

New Member
Hello,
We suspected our son of having "absence" seizures at one point. His EEG was abnormal, but not markedly so. He developed a tremor (intention tremor and general tremor) while on Depakote, although Depakote really did help his behavior :(. His birthmom has seizure issues, but from an accident rather than genetic, as far as we know. This year, he was finally diagnosed as bipolar! So I agree that these signs of rapid mood cycling combined with abnormal EEG pictures can connect to bipolar, as well as past trauma.
Our neurologist told us not to worry, and eventually we stopped. If there is a real issue, it will crop up more clearly. And, abnormal EEGs aren't really that unusual.
Take heart.
 

julierose24

New Member
Thanks for all the replies. I think I agree, Amelia, -if it is a concern, then it will show up, I guess. I'll just keep it in the back of my mind. Interesting that bi polar can be connected. hmmm.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Do NOT believe him. My daughter has Absence seizures, which are the stop and stare off kind the dr is asking about. It is VERY common for a parent to not notice it, To this day my husband almsot never sees these seizures unless they are prolonged. Most kids don't have prolonged ones, but J does sometimes.

It could be when she is reading a book for school or watching tv or doing something on her own that the seizures happen and she might not know. We have a tough time making sure my daughter has heard us tell her something because often if we discuss it later she has that look that lets me know she has no clue that we spoke about it or that we asked her to do or not do something.

Jess calls it 'missing time' or having 'short days' and what she means is she blinks and it is later than she thought or she has missed a big part of a conversation or tv show or whatever is going on. medications help and in my opinion it is medical neglect for the neuro to not put her on medications. seizures of ANY kind are abnormal and can cause brain damage. Also, what happens if she has one while driving or using a piece of machinery like a mixer or lawn mower? It won't be pretty and could result in serious injury or death. My daughter cannot learn to drive because she has seizures and the dr's cannot figure out what is going on. Mostly because they are idiots who keep doing EEGs whle she is on seizure medications, then saying she is seizure free and stopping the medications, and then she has more seizures and they say she can't be because she didn't have any during the EEG. But of course if she is on medications that control the seizures then she wouldn't have any during the test, which seems so much like common sense and basic logic, but the docs cannot seem to grasp this enough to take her off the medications to do the testing. we have twice spent a week in the hospital with her and both times they kept giving her seizure medications and then saying she didn't have any seizure problems, so the cycle of stupidity went round and round and round.

Every seizure has the potential to harm her. The more seizures you have the more likely you are to have seizures. Do some research on absence epilepsy and push the neuro for treatment. also watch her very closely. you may or may not be able to identify when she is having seizures, but they still should be treated, in my opinion. I would really push hard to find out why the doctor thinks that they should be left untreated. OFTEN kids with these seizures are seen as trouble makers or defiant because they don't do what they are told. Of course the child has zero idea that you have told them to do somethng, so of course they don't obey. then they get diagnosis'd with inattentive adhd and get put on stims and the stims cause more seizures many times. It is a tough cycle,a nd the only way to stop it is to figure out what medications will stop the seizures. My daughter was in fourth grade when we started her treatment and she was shocked by how long every day was.

Think about that for a second. Imagine suddenly gaining several HOURS in every day. Talk about strange, and about life changing. This is why we believe my daughter and not the docs when she says she is having seizures. she calls it having a short day because she will be doing something and suddenly she has no clue what we are talking about. It really CAN look like defiance, but it isn't. Of course it is hard to get medications for this, and thankfully (in a very sick way) she has migraines because some of the same migraine preventatives are also antiseizure medications, so the family doctor can rx them. We would vastly prefer a neuro treat her, but we have been to every neuro practice in our STATE and they have all done the exact same thing - give her an EEg while she is on seizure medications and then tell us she has no seizures, stop rxing the medications, and drop us as a patient and then she has more seizures and we are with-o a doctor to treat her. It has had our family doctor pulling his hair out in frustration too, and he has done a fair amt of research into her problems so that at least he can attempt to treat her because his calls and letters to the neuros have ALL gotten less than great results. I have copies of his letters, and of the responses nad I am stunned by the stupidity of the neuros we have seen who fail basic reasoning in our case. We even went to another state to have a doctor see J and got the same stupidity. We are now marking time until next July when she is old enough to go see an adult neuro who might have some basic reasoning skills.

Do your own research. Ask questions on epilepsy forums. Then push the doctor to treat her because every seizure causes problems for her and makes her more likely to have another seizure. There is no way that seizures are something you want her brain to have, and the dr wanting to not treat her because you haven't noticed them is just asking for them to become more and more severe and complicated seizures. Avoid treatments for inattentive adhd, esp stims. Stims make a person MORE likely to have seizures. Years ago they gave everyone who they thought had adhd an eeg before they rx'd medications. They did this because they knew that seizures could cause behaviors that look like adhd and that hey would cause seizures if the chld had a seizure disorder instead of adhd. Now they don't do this routinely. It is why I insisted on eegs before they put my children on stims, and that is the ONLY reason that we found my daughter's seizure disorder.

Absence seizures can last just a few seconds up to about a minute. On my daughter's first eeg she had them approx half the time, meaning that she was having ten to fifteen second seizures almost constantly and had zero idea what was going on half the time. The neuro still uses her eeg as an example of textbook absence seizures because it so clearly showed a severe case. Think about your child missing HALF of her life and trying to piece together what is going on when she can only perceive small snippets of what is happening around her. Your daughter may just think like mne did, that everyone is like this. My daughter didn't know anything else, and was really shocked when she first had medications work for her. The world made a lot of sense to her for the first time in her life, and that is why we have kept working to find a dr who will use some basic logic and treat her for the seizures.

I hope some of this helps. I would really fight to find help for your daughter. You might find that her behavior isn't so much ODD as WTH is going on now??? confused. I know if I only heard small bits of what I was told and I had to work to figure out what it all meant then I would never truly understand what people wanted me to do and they would think that I am severely ODD too.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Julierose, I'm so glad you've gotten such good responses. All I could respond was "yes," but not with the valuable info you've gotten here. Stay on this!
 
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