Anyone ever feel different after a seizure?

[picklenose]

Hello all,

I'm new here and this is my first post. I wanted to make this my first post because this is something I've never seen anyone discuss and I wanted to get the question out there before I forget it (I have the typical epilepsy memory problems).

Anyway, I'm in my mid 30s and have had E since I was about 15. From the time I was 15 until I was about 32, my seizures were extremely well controlled by Depakote. Then, for no apparent reason, the med stopped working as well as it used to. Within a couple of years, I had more TC seizures than I'd had in all the time I'd had E. Despite having my GP up my dose a couple of times, it still isn't as effective as it used to be.

Anyway, the breakthrough seizures I have always seem to happen just as I'm falling asleep. I'll have a couple of the myoclonic jerks I've always had that always served as my auras (They're always accompanied by a weird feeling of profound dread) and then sometimes I will have a full blown TC and sometimes not.

So. The thing I wanted to ask is this -

Has anyone ever felt significantly different after having a particular seizure? Usually, if I have a TC, I'll be sore and out of it for a few days and then I'll gradually go back to feeling the way I did before the seizure.

So I had one about a week ago. This time, though I had the usual soreness, bitten tongue and so forth, after a couple of days, I noticed that my mood was profoundly different than it has been for many years. For the first few days, I felt completely uninterested in things that usually held my interest for many hours.

Then, a few days later, I noticed that I felt somehow, smarter or something. I don't know. I felt like I could think more clearly and I have generally felt like that since then.

Anyway, I thought that was weird because that's the first time I've ever experienced a really noticeable change like that. Usually, I feel dumber or slower after a TC.

 

[Endless]

Hi, Picklenose, and welcome!

Hey, I just posted something similar a few days ago. But the really smart feeling was the seizure itself - a type of Simple Partial seizure. But that was a few minutes or less. You are talking about long-term change? I've had personality changes after seizures, too, getting louder or quieter, being too tired to even pretend I'm interested in something, feeling sad, etc. It usually goes back to normal after a day or two.

Your medication can also be affecting your moods. Even if you've been on a med for a long time you can get side effects.

Sometimes small changes in medication can wreck havoc with seizures. Are you on name brand medication, or generic? If generic, did your pharmacy switch suppliers?

 

[picklenose]

No. I haven't changed anything about my meds recently.

My doc did up the dose a couple of years ago but I hadn't had any changes in the meds for many years until it suddenly became less effective and my doctor felt that I needed more.

 

[Nakamova]

For me, tonic-clonics sometimes feel like a release, sort of like the floodwaters busting through a dam. So although the t-c and any associated injuries feel lousy on the immediate aftermath, there can also be a feeling of relief. I've also occasionally had the feeling of being "charged" up.

Electroshock therapy (which is essentially a deliberate seizure administered in a controlled setting) is used to "re-boot" people suffering from certain kinds of depression. While it is lousy for short-term memory, electroshock can leave people feeling invigorated and up.

 

[Crystal11]

I do feel different after my complex partials. I get real quiet before it- and my auras are strange, upsetting, fearful of something- don't know what.
After the seizures I am also quiet, slowed down, get depressed sometimes or plain upset about having the seizures.
If I'm eating, I loose interest in eating until later.
Sometimes I sleep for 20min afterwards to get back to myself.
Sometimes I have seizure-attemps, which are auras. My eyes go to the right, my head sometimes goes to the right or half my body goes to the right as if tracking something. I play with things sometimes without really knowing it.

Crystal

 

[Birdbomb]

My first seizure left me with a brain injury and I felt like crap for many months. For the first month after it, I couldn't read. I didn't feel normal again for years.
The seizure I had in February did the opposite. Aside from the usual injuries, masticated tongue, within 6 hours I began to feel very "up" almost depression free. Much like what is described after a session of ECT That feeling stayed for several days but then the weather began changing and woke up the RA and fybro, Back to business as usual.

 

[picklenose]

For me, tonic-clonics sometimes feel like a release, sort of like the floodwaters busting through a dam.

That's an interesting way to put it. I noticed this the last couple of times I had one. For days (or weeks) before the actual seizure, it kind of seemed like I was "working up to" having one. I was having more and more myoclonics.

Usually, when I finally do have a TC, I don't even have any myoclonics at all for a while after that. The weirdest thing is that I've never had more than one TC in, say, a month or so. It's like having one releases some kind of pent up energy that is needed for a TC to actually happen.

 

[picklenose]

My first seizure left me with a brain injury and I felt like crap for many months and for the first month after, I couldn't even read. I didn't feel normal again for years.

Wow! That must have been bad for you.

That is what scares me the most. The fact that sometime, I think I might end up really hurting myself doing something perfectly mundane that I never gave a second thought to before my seizures got worse and never even knowing what hit me. Sometimes I think about that when I walk by a large plate glass window or something. I just think "What if?".

 

[picklenose]

I do feel different after my complex partials. I get real quiet before it- and my auras are strange, upsetting, fearful of something- don't know what.

Yes. This would be the way I would describe it. It's so strange. It's the same exact feeling every time. And when it's over, I can never remember exactly what it was that made me feel so scared. I have the feeling that it's the exact same thought every time. It's there for a few seconds, I get this terrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach like the feeling you get on a roller coaster and then I get this tingly feeling in my head. I almost hate those more than the TCs because they're so upsetting. I don't remember anything from the TCs. Does any of that sound familiar?

 

[Birdbomb]

The bad part about it, I wasn't diagnosed with a TBI until 4 years later. We'd had a nasty auto accident and PTSD
was suspected, the TBI and PTSD was found when they tested me. I also found out it takes over 2 years for the brain to recover. In my attempts to return to college to finish my degree, I found out I'd lost all my math skills and the ability to read maps. Comprehending written directions are very difficult too. Plus a few other lovely parting gifts.
It took me quite a while to come to terms with this. I guess the reason this last seizure didn't upset me because it left no lasting noticeable brain injury.

 

[picklenose]

In my attempts to return to college to finish my degree, I found out I'd lost all my math skills and the ability to read maps. Comprehending written directions are very difficult too.

I never had any math skills. I've always been utterly terrible at it. My attention span is not good at all.

 

[Endless]

Yes. This would be the way I would describe it. It's so strange. It's the same exact feeling every time. And when it's over, I can never remember exactly what it was that made me feel so scared. I have the feeling that it's the exact same thought every time. It's there for a few seconds, I get this terrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach like the feeling you get on a roller coaster... Does any of that sound familiar?

Yes - that's EXACTLY how I feel before my seizures. Except the sinking feeling in my stomach lasts minutes, not seconds. And that horrible feeling that something is terribly wrong can last hours (on and off) before I actually have the seizure. I'm finding that I can sometimes concentrate very hard, meditate, and ward off a seizure for awhile. But eventually I stop concentrating and it happens anyway.

I described the roller coaster feeling to my epi, and he said, "not epilepsy." Ha. I know he is wrong.

Today I had an aura and seizure while shopping at Target. It started in the shampoo isle, and I felt that sense of dread, that weird feeling in my head, and the roller coaster thing in my stomach. Now that I know what my auras feel like I often have enough warning before a seizure to get to a place where I feel safe(r). I thought I had enough time to finish shopping and get out of the store, but I had a simple partial seizure by the time I got to the skin care isle. It was a fear seizure, which are awful. I was terrified and froze like a deer in headlights. I couldn't stop staring at a bottle of Neutrogena. My scrambled brain thought I was scared of the Neutrogena. Crazy. I have no idea how long it lasted. Time kind of goes kablooey for me during seizures.

Afterwards my brain felt totally blown out of my head. I couldn't think and I was really shakey and tired. I checked out and got the heck out of there. Amazing I can go through something like that and no one around me knows about it. I guess it beats having a TC right in middle of the skin care isle.

I felt like curling up in the parking lot. It was tough getting home. Three hours of sleep later I'm feeling back to normal.