Could all or any of these symptoms be linked to epilepsy?

[ktbuttons]

hi, i'm katie, i'm 19.. today i realized that i may have some form epilepsy.
sometime around november/december of last year, i started getting what i could only describe as deja-vu spells, multiple times a day.. for almost a month straight. i wouldn't exactly describe it as deja-vu, more like deja senti. it usually occurs when i'm reading, usually in school. a certain thought will pop into my head, however i can't describe what the thought is because i always forget what it is after this happens. it turns into a weird train of thoughts that i feel as if i've been wanting to remember, i can see it developing and getting more in depth and find myself thinking "oh yeah! i remember now!" like it's all coming together, and then it just turns into nausea and a little headache. it almost feels like i'm in a dream, or (this sounds crazy) maybe from a different universe, or a thought from a different life. i have a really hard time describing it. afterwards i just feel confused and weirded out like what just happened??! lol.
up until today, i never was able to find anything out online about what was happening to me because i just couldn't explain it. until i read an article about deja senti, which is basically exactly what happens.
then i found out many epilectics experience deja senti spells, and i was like AHA! that may explain it!

anyways, i read a few more symptoms of epilepsy that i think i have, but i'm not really sure about them. first of all, i have a major bad habit of picking the skin around my fingers and toes. when i do it, i go almost into a trance. i do it all day without really realizing it.. it just happens.
i read that automatisms can be a sign of epilepsy, not sure if the finger picking would be considered an automatic behavior, though.
ALSO! on saturday night, i was out with some friends, and i went to sleep while they all stayed up. in the morning they told me that in the middle of the night i randomly sat up & started pointing at everyone, speaking some weird language & just talking to them & giggling. i told my sister about this and she told me i always used to do that when i was younger and we would sleep in the same room. so, i'm not sure if i do this very often, but i read that this is also another example of an automatism.

do you guys think that all of these could be related to epilepsy??
i've been so confused as to why i do all of these things, why they happen to me. and today i realized they all may be a form of the same problem-epilepsy. it would be cool to hear from people who actually know what epilepsy is like.
any help, advice, comments, or whatever is appreciated

 

[Endless]

Hi, Katie, and welcome.

Have you seen a doctor about your symptoms? They sound like they could be seizures. You really need to be checked out by an M.D., to look at and eliminate all the possible causes. Epilepsy is only one of the many causes of seizures. If they are seizures, your doc will want to do a bunch of tests like blood tests, MRI of your head, etc.

 

[occb]

My partner picks at the skn on his fingers and toes when he spaces out, so it's possible that what you're experiencing are seizures.

Do you ever have big muscle jerks in your arms or legs, bigger and more often than other people generally do?

 

[ktbuttons]

i will be going to the doctor as soon as possible to get this checked out
thanks!

and yeah, occb, my legs tend to be twitchy or have sort of shakey spells.. nothing too major but i am kind of twitchy. lol. i do tend to randomly lose control of my arms/hands sometimes and drop whatever i'm holding, haha, i'm pretty clumsy!!

 

[occb]

Aha! You're not clumsy -- I bet you also tip over sometimes as if pushed. You're not dizzy, you don't lose your balance, you just... tipple.

You might want to the llinks in read this thread a bit and see if anything else sounds familiar.

 

[ktbuttons]

yes! i do "tipple" occasionally.. not too often though.
thanks for sending me those links, pretty interesting! i read over a few of them, but they were a bit hard for me to understand (VERY new to this topic!)! so not too many of those symptoms jumped out at me.. i would say that i can probably relate more to the symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy. atleast as far as i can tell! there is so much information to take in.
however i found myself reading some posts you made about different things your partner has been experiencing, and i do a lot of the same things! i space out very often, forgetting what i had just watched on tv or read in a book. usually when that happens i've been picking at my fingers or toes.
i tend to grind my teeth at night as well, i'm not sure if your partner does this too but i read some other peeps saying they were teeth grinders!
i'm also EXTREMELY irritable, every since these deja vu spells started happening. i never used to be. i feel very sensitive to everything around me, whether it's positive or negative. i feel very extreme emotions...
do you think it's possible for something like this to come on because of stress? these things started happening to me right when i started feeling VERY stressed in school, depressed, didn't feel like myself anymore.
i'm not sure if these could be related to epilepsy.. i'm just dying to get some idea of what all these things could be caused from..
thanks again

-kt

 

[occb]

Stress and fatigue are definitely huge triggers, so that may be what's worsened your situation. I say worsened, since the night-time episodes seem to have been with you since childhood, judging by what your sister said. You may want to find out from her if you've done anything else in you sleep.

Extreme moods can definitely be a result of experiencing these. My partner had terrible depression in his late teens and was placed on antidepressants that never really helped, and in fact, worsened a few things. We're only now suspecting they may have mainly had a neurological cause, instead of a psychological one (a recent psych assessment has backed up these suspicions)

Keep reading, keep yourself informed. Keep a diary of these events, when they happen, what happened, how you feel before and after. Do NOT let docs bully you into thinking "it's all in your head", because there's something definitely odd going on.

My partner doesn't so much grind as chomp his teeth in his sleep :lol:

 

[Kansas Educator]

I would definitely go to the Dr. before I jumped to any conclusions. While it certainly could be epilepsy, it could also be daydreaming during the day and dreaming at night time!

 

[ktbuttons]

yes, the weird sleep episodes have been there since around 5th grade!
and i have gotten the deja-vu spell periodically throughout my life, just every now and then, until november 2009 when they got real bad! luckily they have stopped happening every day, now they only happen probably about once every 3 weeks to a month. i wouldn't really say they're a huge problem.. i almost sort of enjoy them.. in a weird way, lol. besides the physical symptoms i feel, not a fan of those!! i just want to make sure this won't lead to something worse, yaknow

anyways, thanks guys for your input!! i really appreciate it! it's very frustrating feeling these things, and not knowing where to go to get help or who to talk to about them.
i'll be making a doctors appointment today, hopefully they can help me figure this out.
i have a feeling they will think it's nothing, like most people i tell do
but you may be right, kansas educator, i do tend to be a daydreamer! or they may also just be because of migraines, used to get those a lot when i was younger. i'm also scared it could be related to some mental illness, i do have a history of them in my family.

ah, the possibilties seem endless..
can't wait to see what the doctor says!!!:woot:

 

[Chris515]

i wouldn't exactly describe it as deja-vu, more like deja senti. it usually occurs when i'm reading, usually in school. a certain thought will pop into my head, however i can't describe what the thought is because i always forget what it is after this happens. it turns into a weird train of thoughts that i feel as if i've been wanting to remember, i can see it developing and getting more in depth and find myself thinking "oh yeah! i remember now!" like it's all coming together, and then it just turns into nausea and a little headache.

Hi Katie,

Welcome to the site! You'll find a lot of support, information and great people here.

What you described there sounds like sp seizures to me. Very similar descriptions to what happens to me when I have a sp.

I have a lot of extreme moods/emotions too, I know how you feel on that one.

I'm glad to hear you'll be going to the doctor, I hope you'll get a referral to a neurologist.

Chris

 

[ktbuttons]

thanks chris!!
this forum has already been of much help

feels awesome to know that i'm not the only one this is happening too, really felt like that for the past few months.
if you don't mind me asking, what else happens to you during a simple partial? i'm beginning to notice that many of my symptoms match up with those. but it'd be cool to hear from someone who has first hand experience!

 

[occb]

Kansas Educator -- I know it may look like I'm jumping to conclusions here, but maybe if I explained, it might be clearer.

I don't have epilepsy--but I've had terrible moods, I've daydreamed all my life, I've been pretty active in my sleep (so much so, I've bruised other people). I've had deja vu, deja senti, and out of body experiences. That's pretty normal stuff for many people.

What I don't do is:

• randomly lose control of my arms and drop things
• tip over for no reason
• pick at my fingers and toes while spacing out

My partner does all of those things, and he's having other seizures besides. Others I have spoken with who have been diagnosed with frontal lobe epilepsy also do these exact same things, and they also experience them in clusters. It's a pattern that's pretty much across the board for FLE, and that's what's catching my attention here.

ktbuttons -- I'm not saying you for sure have epilepsy, but I would definitely visit a doctor to see what's up, and maybe get both a neuro and a psych eval, especially with a history of psychiatric illnesses in your family.

You can always come here to talk about what's going on, regardless of what you're dx'd with.

 

[Chris515]

thanks chris!!
this forum has already been of much help

feels awesome to know that i'm not the only one this is happening too, really felt like that for the past few months.
if you don't mind me asking, what else happens to you during a simple partial? i'm beginning to notice that many of my symptoms match up with those. but it'd be cool to hear from someone who has first hand experience!

Yeah I felt that way too when I found this site. I had been dealing with it for most of my life and nobody understood what I was going though. But being on here has helped me so much!

I'll often I'll have auras before a sp. Like a little seizure that's almost a warning, in a way. It's like a small amount of random feelings and memories being placed into my head out of nowhere. It will last for a few seconds.

When the sp starts, it feels like a rush to my head, and I get a very very strong sense of deja vu. Then intense random feelings and emotions start up as well. The deja vu of memories keep on piling up in my brain, and it's all I can think about at the time. The memories seem familiar, and they keep building up on eachother, but they are just a little out of reach. But when the sp is over I can't remember any of them. I'm conscious during the seizure, and aware of my surroundings, but I can't communicate or do much else than wait for it to be over. After I'll be very confused, sometimes I can't speak properly, and I won't be able to comprehend speech or writing for a good 20 minutes or so.

The damage to my brain is in the temporal lobe near the memory bank part of my brain, so that is why I get a lot of deja vu sensations.

So overall it sucks.. as sometimes it really sucks as it will generalize into a tc.

 

[ktbuttons]

chris - wow, that's almost exactly the way i feel when it happens to me! it's like, a little string of thoughts that i feel i've had before, but they're just coming back to me. getting stronger and more familiar as they go, like i'm re-remembering them. and that's all i can focus on for like a minute. man, it is really cool to know that other people feel this as well. i'm not crazy!!!! lol.
i was never able to describe that feeling to anyone, until i read this, which perfectly describes the spells -
"
“What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been for a time forgotten, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for... At the same time, or... more accurately in immediate sequence, I am dimly aware that the recollection is fictitious and my state abnormal. The recollection is always started by another person’s voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as ‘Oh yes—I see’, ‘Of course—I remember’, &c., but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions.”"

sound familiar at all??
what exactly do you mean by "tc"? (sorry! i'm so new to this! haha)


and thanks, occb, i'll definitely keep you guys posted when/if i found out what's up!!

 

[tam bam]

Please do keep us posted ktbuttons. We do care.

tam bam

 

[Chris515]

Katie - That does sound familiar!! Wow, that's a perfect description for sure.

Sorry, I meant to write tonic clonic. Usually on here when you write the letters t and then c without a space it automatically spells out the whole thing. Anyways. A tonic clonic is the seizure most people associate with epilepsy - the convulsive seizure, formerly known as a grand mal.

Here's a good description:

http://www.epilepsy.com/EPILEPSY/seizure_tonicclonic

Sometimes I'll have a simple partial seizure, which is only occurring in one part of my brain, and then it spreads out to the enitre brain (generalizes) and that's when the tonic clonic shows up. boo.

 

[ktbuttons]

Thanks tambam!!

Wow chris, that's so scary. Sorry you gotta deal with that :/
Did you start getting the partial seizures & then they developed in tonic clonics?
That's the reason I feel I need to get to the doc asap, just in case mine develop into something worse. So scary :/

 

[Cint]

Hi ktbuttons,

I started having seizures at the age of 22. Initially, they were something like you have described and I had gone to a dr. who diagnosed it as hypoglycemia. The medication for hypoglycemia didn't do a darned thing for the seizures! The "spells" increased in intensity and within 6 months, I experienced my 1st tonic-clonic seizure.
I still experience complex partial seizures and once in a great while, a tonic-clonic.

I hope you do find a dr/neurologist ASAP and they find answers for you.
Good luck!

 

[Chris515]

Hi Katie,

Thanks, they are hard to deal with. I had complex partials my whole childhood, and then one day I had a tonic clonic when I was 12. After that the complex partials stopped and I started having a ton of simple partials, and then in the last few years the tonic clonics have shown up again. Sometimes they just happen on their own, sometimes they generalize from simple partials.

I really hope this doesn't happen to you! Not everyone has them, we all have various types of seizures.

Chris

 

[dfwtexas]

Hi Katie, welcome to our group. I think going to doctor would be good, sounds like you could definitely be having seizures. There is a lot to learn about E but this group is so friendly, helpful and understanding...you will get a lot of support.
Stress, being tired are two very commons triggers for seizures. I also have some photosenstivity....where certain lights can trigger seizures. I have had most of my seizures at work....may me think it was reading too, but it is tied to the lights at work. Let us know what you find out when you go to doctor. We all really care here
jenn