Causes of Epilepsy (PSY Project)

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CainDogGirl

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As I said before in my introduction post, joining is in part for my class project. However it is also for my own sake. So question number one is how and when did your epilepsy develop?

Mine was when I was three and an effect of getting sick and almost dying of E.Coli. This seems like an atypical way of developing epilepsy though and as such is an important question so I can really be sure of how others can develop it. Please and thank you for your responses. :)
 
Mine came on very suddenly when I was 15, have never been sure what has caused it.
Some doctors said it could have bee stress, others said it could have simply been my brain developing wrong.
Another idea was that I was attacked when I was 15 and strangled. Someone said that oxygen deprivation could trigger it.
 
Mine also came on very suddenly.I had my first tonic when i was seventeen,im not sure what caused it.It was my first day at a new job so perhaps it was stress,i just don't have a definite answer for the question.Although i sure wish i did,it would help a lot in my understanding off why me.
 
Crash said:
it would help a lot in my understanding off why me.
Click to expand...

Why me, you ask. I think ALL of us with E ask that question.

Mine started when I was 22 years old. They started as CPs (I didn't know it at the time) and then had my first TC and ended up in the hospital. I had my 23rd birthday while hospitalized. No head injury, no illness like meningitis, encephalitis, etc., no low blood sugar at the time. They call it idiopathic epilepsy.
 
Yes your right Cint,i was just writing from a personal perspective-thats all.
 
Neurocutaneous syndrome and probable mitochondrial disease, but a few symptoms including the seizures did not manifest until between 3 and 12 years ago. Seizures began 3 1/2 years ago at age 44.
 
I began having simple partial seizures when I was 17, but I when I raised concerns with my doctor, I was given some temporary medication and the chance that it could be epilepsy was dismissed immediately.

I get diagnosed a few days after my 18th Birthday party when I entered a constant seizure state at home. No idea what caused it - there is no trace of epilepsy in the family either.
 
I had my 1st tonic clonic seizure at 9 months old & took tonic clonic seizures until I was about 3. I went 21 years seizure free until I started taking seizures again in May 2002 when I was 24.

I had my 1st seizure just after I ha a tetanus injection (for whooping cough), can't be 100% sure but it is believed that the seizures may be linked to the injection. After my seizures returned I had MRIs which showed scarring on my left temporal lobe. My specialists believe the scarring was from the bad tonic clonics I had as a baby but no one knows why I went so long in between seizures.
 
I had my first seizure about 9 or 10, but I didn't get a diagnosis until 12 ish. We think it was triggered by my hormones going into puberty.
 
Mines started 5 years ago due to a car accident I was in 14 years ago. My head hit the windshield, the windshield had a starburst in it and my hair and scalp. 5 years ago I began noticing that I was waking up with bruises all over and very very sore, along with being so tired, like I hadn't slept at all. 2 years ago I was diagnosed with nocturnal epilepsy. I've never had a seizure in an awake state. This year I was finally approved for disability. I also have Migraines they said were also associated with the head injury. So being taken out of my job by ambulance and having to call off......every job was like that and employers couldn't handle it and I'd get fired......My doctors finally realized the work force was not something that I could participate in anymore.
So nocturnal seizures, migraines and my old life is over.
 
hi welcome and welcome!
I'm a regular here but have not been on in a while.
I've been having tonic clonics since 2008. I was a heavy drinker for a long time, sober now 10 years, I had a couple head injuries as a child, after I quit drinking I played hockey and quit after a some hard checks, and a "save" taking a "wrister" puck to my cheekbone, mild concussion...
I don't really know what started it but it was fairly concurrent to my not wearing a face mask. my cheek swelled to about golf ball sized.
I'll attribute it to alcoholism I guess, because it's an easy scapegoat and an "evil" for me.
 
I had simple partials start when I was 17. Being one of 4 boys we had all kinds of head crackin's from various sports and tough play but I've never had a diagnosis of an injury. My parents told me I had a huge seizure when I was 4 months but I've always been told infantile seizures are common and probably not related to what I have now. The partials were few and far between but as I've gotten older they've increased in frequency to the point where I had to stop working this summer. 1 tonic clonic in May '13 is the only "big one" I've ever had. That one beat me up pretty bad.
 
My mom is convinced a childhood vaccine (dtp) caused my epilepsy when I was 3 yrs old. I grew out of it a few yrs later, then bam- at 39 a few tonic clonics out of the blue.
 
Mine turned up when I was fifteen, but I had been passing out weekly for a few years before that, they told me that it could be lots of things - it could be hormones, it could be my brain developing wrong, it could be any times I have knocked myself doing sport.
But for a while my mum was convinced it was because I was attacked around the same time of the first grand mal and, during the attack oxygen was cut off to my brain. This was another possibility.
 
Mine just started when I was 17 was staying at a mates and it just happened. Never found out a cause.
 
I believe I first learned of it (though did not know what it was) close to about 20 years ago when I fell down stairs - not 100% sure if it was 18,19, or 20 years back, just that I had moments going down stairs where I blacked out for just a few seconds. Doctor was not sure just what was happening. A year or two later I started having moments anywhere when I would get dizzy, then black out for a short period. After this did not go away, that is when I was sent to a neurologist who decided to do a MRI and found AVM (arteriovenous malformation) on left side of brain. The known not so fun game - seizure life - started then.
 
There are currently two theories on my epilepsy and both involve head injuries and I doubt we will ever know which is the real reason.

My whole childhood they thought I had a dissociative disorder because of all my blackouts and my traumatic childhood, although I was in an accident at 5 where I hit my head really hard, they never ran any tests and just chalked it up to dissociative disorder.

At 21 years old I fell and once again hit my head causing a horrible concussion and a blackout that came and went for 18 hours back to back. I had a concussion and a couple months later had my first drop attack but was shrugged off as fainting, had other episodes as well that were all brushed off with different reasons.

It wasn't until I had a tonic clonic that I realized I had any seizures at all and it wasn't until I was 25 and this past april and many blackouts later and EEG confirmation that I was diagnosed with epilepsy
 
I started at 17 as well, and no cause was ever able to be found. Idiopathic.
 
Mine also started at age 15. The only head trauma I had was falling off a small horse, but that was several years earlier, so nobody ever thought that was the cause. I've had EEGs that show only normal activity and others that show "something" is wrong, they just don't know where.
 
I had my first witnessed tonic clonic when I was 24, but in retrospect I probably had been having the occasional partial seizure and maybe even tonic clonics for much of my life, but since the early ones happened when I was asleep people would not have seen them. I am 55 now and have only had four tonic clonics, the most recent one just over a year ago, but I have hundreds of simple partials a year. No cause has ever been found.

(hi petero! I haven't been here for a while myself. Welcome back!)
 
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