I;m New to the Forum

[rcetintas]

Hi. I am new to the Coping With Epilepsy forum and want to introduce myself. I am 36 years old and have had epilepsy for 13 years. They began on the first day of my period every month with sensory simple partial seizures followed by a secondary convulsive seizure. Once on medication the convulsive seizures stopped and the simple partial seizures manifested themselves differently. They went from seeing purple and red floaters, to seeing people in what seemed like positive and negative space (don't know how else to describe it), to hallucinations. I am currently on Lamictal and folic acid. I am looking into alternative treatments to epilepsy and will listen to any advice regarding these. So far so good on the forum! I'm very happy to be here.

[Laina_Bravo]

rcetintas, welcome to Cwe. There are so many resources here you will hopefully find helpful. Start looking around and asking more questions and good luck!

[huskymom]

Hello Welcome to the party! I hope that you are able to find what you need here, if it is advice, a place to rant, or just chat. Everyone here is so great!

[Nakamova]

Welcome!

You might want to check out these links for info on alternatives:
http://www.coping-with-epilepsy.com/...ive-treatments
Neurofeedback - Rebecca's Story

Best,
Nakamova

[rcetintas]

Thank you, Nakamova.

[rcetintas]

Thank you very much, Huskymom!

[Endless]

Welcome, Rcetintas!

I'm glad you found us here in the forum. The people here are great. They've given me tons of good advice, and support.

This is one of my favorite links with an analysis of different integrative medicine techniques for epilepsy, plus info on supplements/herbs and which actually help, and which could really hurt you. It's from MD's, so it may not be as encouraging about certain methods as some. But I love the tables at the end that talk about herbs.

http://pcs.hmc.washington.edu/Epilepsy/EpiInfo/CAM.html

There are a ton of women whose seizures happen with changes in hormones. Look here: http://www.epilepsy.com/epilepsy/provoke_menstrual

Thank you for your description of your seizures. When I try to describe them to my family and friends they just look at me like I'm nuts. Even the ones who are supportive. They especially have problems when I describe hallucinations.

I'm sorry it's happening to you, but it just feels so good to hear about similar experiences from other people. It makes me feel almost normal.

[Minkels]

Hello and welcome....I am a newcomer too, but have found everyone very helpful and lots of great information on the site. My seizures seem to be mostly clustered around the first day of my period as well (just one my reason to love that time of month, eh?!).

I'm on several meds, and haven't had a convulsive (tonic clonic) for a while but still get the simple partials though mine too are manifested differently than they were before the meds. I can live with this so long as I don't have any more of the tonic clonic variety.

Hope that you continue to do well, and enjoy your stay here.