A few questions

[mooselips]

Hi everyone,
I'm new and my husband, who hopefully will be joining soon, was recently diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy with generalized seizures.

Anyway, he has had 2 seizures, one in July, in Canada, and one in October, at home in Ohio I witnessed the one in July after it started, he had tonic clonic movements, and was unresponsiove for about 10 minutes, then had a post ictal stage, and slept for 2 hours after we returned from the hospital. We went to the E.R. they did nothing in Canada. So when we returned home to Ohio in October, we saw the family Dr. and he had a Ct scan and EEg...both negative. We then saw a Cardiologist, and he ordered a tilt table test, and during the test, my husband fainted. They had no idea why, it wasn't a seizure.
So, that's one question...why fainting on the tilt table?

So, here we are now, he had an 72 hour ambulatory EEg, and was diagnosed, and placed on dilantin.

His last seizure was October 13th. When can he resume driving?
We live in Ohio.

Thanks.
(I'm just full of questions!)

[RobinN]

Welcome Mooselips:

Epilepsy and Driving
Driving and Epilepsy

These are good threads about driving.

[mooselips]

Thanks Robin,
I've been searching around the forum, and reading different posts, and threads. very informative, thank you all.
Our big problem is we travel quite a bit.
Canada from May to October, Ohio October to January, Florida from February to May...so, we don't know how this all works, if he gets his license back in Ohio.

What a mess.

AND we (him and me) don't want him to drive, if he is at all unsafe.
He has NO warning a seizure is approaching, so we want safety first for others, and ourselves.

Thank you,

[RobinN]

I do understand. Rebecca hasn't show any signs of knowing in advance either.
I will most likely require her to wait twice as long as what the DMV does.

It does seem to change quality of life, and lifestyles.
Could you consider taking the train to your destinations? We must look for alternatives so that the tunnel isn't so dark. We need to see a light down the road.

[mooselips]

Oh its okay, I can drive for both of us...LOL

It's just that he's feeling somewhat isolated, secondary to loss of independence of not being able to drive. He's 58, and it's kind of difficult to deal with, but he realizes that, for now, it's for the best.

We see the Dr. again on January 4th, and we will resign ourselves to his decision, whatever that will be.

[RobinN]

Even though I have never experienced it, I understand that loss.
My approach though differs from the traditional view. Why was your husband seizure free for over 50 yrs. How can you get his "body" back to that state again. We all have seizure thresholds. His has been lowered for some reason.

Have you taken any time to look over the nutritional changes that can help?
I have my daughter on an elimination nutritional plan that is quite strict. It was based on the research done by a vet, and makes a lot of common sense to me. Look at his epilepsy pages:

www.dogtorj.tripod.com

[Bernard]

Hi Diane, the epilepsy 101 thread is a good place to start for people who are newly diagnosed.

Sorry, I'm not sure about the tilt table test. Perhaps it's a cardiac/blood flow issue.