Bending elbows + tight fists ?!?! (tonic-clonic question)

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jayde-101

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hello everyone:)
hope everyone is doing alright out there today ...

well i have a question for anyone who has seen or had a tonic-clonic seizure...

my gp told me that when one is having a tonic-clonic seizure your arms are always straight and you dont make fists ....

well during my tonic-clonic i have rythmic movements from the elbows ..like ermm,,, my elbows are always bent and its like im trying to straigten them but they are being snapped straigt back if that makes sence?? and my hands are always in a tight fist ....??

im quite lucky cause my partner was able to tape it this time so i can show the neuro when i see her on the 16th and hopefully they will start me on meds cause i cant keep having these :/

but i would love to hear your views please :ponder:

thanks x
 
That sounds along the lines of what I've been told about my TC seizures. From what I understand people don't normally stay rigid during a TC seizure as well. The tonic portion, they go rigid, then it goes into the rhymatic convulsions that most people are familiar with. There are some people that will look like they're trying to curl into the fetal postion, others stay fairly straight and rigid, others violently snap. I think it all depends on how exactly your motor cortexes are being affected by the seizure.

I know, for me, that during a really bad one I'll snap forward with my elbow like I'm doing an elbow strike on a punching bag, only instead of a punching bag I'm striking the floor. So the upper arm and shoulder muscles go forward while my forearm muscles pull back, so that the only place that makes contact during the hit is the sharp part of my elbow. Got told I did that by a paramedic when I came to in an ambulance...

Sometimes I wonder if muscle memory gets activated or is brought into effect during a TC. Nobody I've ever heard of does anything like an elbow strike during a TC, but with a background in martial arts since I was 7 or 8 I do them all the time and it's totally natural for my body to perform one. Kinda scary to think about though, throwing elbows and such during a TC could really damage someone if they were too close to me. I guess I'd prefer to think of it as a one-time fluke during a TC and not a "normal" thing because of how dangerous something like that could be for someone around me. Bleh, I ramble...
 
I know when I have larger partial seizures my legs bend in ways that I have to either grab something so I don't fall over or squat down.

I'm not really aware of how they bend and even though I don't remember it happening I've come out of them either squatted or holding on to something.
 
well my arms seem to cross across my chest as though im trying to put my right arm on my left shoulder and my left arm on the right shoulder and my fists are clenched and they rythmically jerk my legs are out stretched and my feet are turnt inwards they too are also jerking rythmically ?
 
When I do the elbow thing, that's pretty much how it works. Right arm crosses to left side, the hand comes in towards the shoulder while the upperarm and shoulder muscles propel the elbow forward. It wasn't a "gentle" movement though, it was very fast and violent.

Your description seems pretty normal to me. In the vid can you see your eyes? What are they doing?
 
my eyes are wide open and i look as thou im looking up to the right... you can only really see the whites of my eyes cause they are looking up so much

my eyelids are fluttering quite alot.... and im making the most un-lady like grunting you have ever heard ... it sounds awful ... almost like i cant breathe
 
That sounds like an epileptic seizure. Good thing you got it on camera so your doctors can see!
In a non-epileptic seizure, typically the eyelids stay slammed shut. In an epileptic seizure the eyes stay open or flutter a lot, like you described.

The grunting is caused because the diaphragm is spasming, causing air to be forced in and out randomly, instead of rhytmically like breathing normally is. The force of it causes the sound to eminate from deep in your chest and throat :)
 
Silat said:
The grunting is caused because the diaphragm is spasming, causing air to be forced in and out randomly, instead of rhytmically like breathing normally is. The force of it causes the sound to eminate from deep in your chest and throat :)
Click to expand...

oh i never knew that ... just now that ive seen it on video... its awfull i sound horrid ... nevermind looking horrid aswell :roflmao: the things we have to go through !!!

so the reason we lose bladder control .. is that cuase the bladder contracts and realeses what ever its holding then ?? or is that something compleatly different ?
 
Kinda like that. The bladder itself isn't muscle, it's an organ, so it can't contract. It's the muscles around the bladder which spasm then relax, and since there's no muscle tension in the area that's steady to hold it in, it just kinda comes out. Doesn't happen in every seizure, but when it does happen that's the reason why. :)
 
Silat said:
Doesn't happen in every seizure, but when it does happen that's the reason why. :)
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.... you kidding .... :( it happens on pretty much all of my t/c's ... never on a partial just on a T/C seizure ... i think the worse one was when i was coming round and i was still in a really bad haze and i still couldnt talk or respond or even move yet but i could hear my surroundings.. and i was aware of my bladder letting go and i was like O.o Noooooooo :( ... i could have just cried it was the most awful feeling ever ! wanted the ground to swallow me up :paperbag:
 
jayde-101 said:
.... you kidding .... :( it happens on pretty much all of my t/c's ... never on a partial just on a T/C seizure ... i think the worse one was when i was coming round and i was still in a really bad haze and i still couldnt talk or respond or even move yet but i could hear my surroundings.. and i was aware of my bladder letting go and i was like O.o Noooooooo :( ... i could have just cried it was the most awful feeling ever ! wanted the ground to swallow me up :paperbag:
Click to expand...

Well women are more prone to it happening to them, but it doesn't always happen with a TC. Women are more prone because of the muscles around the reproductive organs.
I know it's socially horrifying to have happen... :(
 
Silat said:
I know it's socially horrifying to have happen... :(
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I always carry a change of clothes for the bottom half of me now cause its so humiliating

Like i said earlier im a bit scared/worried how often i have a t/c seizure ... They are getting more frequent :( well i see the neurologist on the 16th july for eeg results and talk about meds .....

When keeping a journal what sort of things do you write down etc
 
Um... the date it happened. Estimated time, duration, and such. I then write as detailed of a description as I can come up with for what happened. Then for each type I put a different colored dot next to them. At the end of each week, I go through and count up the dots and that's my total of each type of seizure per-week.
So - Red dot is a TC
Yellow dot is a Partial-complex
Blue is a simple-partial
And so on :)
 
Silat said:
Um... the date it happened. Estimated time, duration, and such. I then write as detailed of a description as I can come up with for what happened. Then for each type I put a different colored dot next to them. At the end of each week, I go through and count up the dots and that's my total of each type of seizure per-week.
So - Red dot is a TC
Yellow dot is a Partial-complex
Blue is a simple-partial
And so on :)
Click to expand...

Thats a really good idea :) very simple but effective :) Im new to keeping a journal of events so i was/am bit confused :p
 
It's very simple, but it's effective and makes taking it into your doctors office a lot simpler. Instead of going through it page-by-page and tallying it there, you go in with a tally and then can go back from there and evaluate each one if the doctor wants to in-depth. :)
 
Im gonna start to keep a journal and show my neuro the video and see what they say ... All of my tonic-clonic seizures are lasting 5-6 mins each time and im worried it will do damage :(
 
well. if you take a look on youtube, you can see children seizures, some have clenched fists, some have fingers loose. *I say use children as these are 90% epileptic seizures as opposed to something physically causing them, where as adults online can either fake, or have non-e seizures*

Every single TC is different. Epileptic or not. Some E seizures have eyes closed, no bladder loss, clenched fists etc, but are still E. some non-E seizures can have eyes open, etc. its all depends on where in the brain teh seizure starts and severity.
 
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