Do your seizures hurt?

Do your seizures hurt?

  • Yes

    Votes: 16 38.1%
  • No

    Votes: 18 42.9%
  • Don't Know

    Votes: 8 19.0%

  • Total voters
    42

Welcome to the Coping With Epilepsy Forums

Welcome to the Coping With Epilepsy forums - a peer support community for folks dealing (directly or indirectly) with seizure disorders. You can visit the forum page to see the list of forum nodes (categories/rooms) for topics.

Please have a look around and if you like what you see, please consider registering an account and joining the discussions. When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no ads, access to members only (ie. private) forum nodes and more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!

Matthew74

Stalwart
Messages
597
Reaction score
26
Points
93
Do your seizures hurt?

I'm curious about the actual experience of the seizure itself while you are seizing, rather than how you feel afterward. Include any aura as part of the seizure.

Thank you!
 
I guess the only time I can remember "feeling" them is during a simple partial. Nope. Not one bit of physical pain.
 
The only time my seizures hurt is when I have a tonic clonic and bust my head open.
 
The busting of heads is no fun. I usually just bite my tongue.

I didn't know until maybe a couple of years ago that this was uncommon. Nobody told me! So I was just wondering what your experiences were.

My everyday simple partials are not "painful", just annoying or uncomfortable. However I get these shocks up my right arm that really do hurt. I would have a hard time relating the way they hurt to anything "normal". These can then spread into a complex partial, and eventually a secondarily generalized. It' not unbearable, but is painful. When I'm generalizing but before I pass out I get this intense sense of tingling that takes over and is extremely uncomfortable. It's not as bad if I relax. Thankfully, I haven't had these for a couple years.
 
Last edited:
The actual seizure itself doesn't hurt. But hitting the wall or desk with my arm does.
 
I get wicked head aches after and wake up sometimes with bruises (on my face last time) from how i fell. I do not recall what happens during.
 
The busting of heads is no fun. I usually just bite my tongue.
I didn't know until maybe a couple of years ago that this was uncommon. Nobody told me! So I was just wondering what your experiences were.

hi matthew :)
do you mean 'biting your tongue' is uncommon? :ponder: who told you that- it is very not uncommon. happens to lots of us, and for some it's with every t.c. they have.

as for pain, not really, other than the stomach roll at the start of a simple. doesn't really 'hurt' tho, but doesn't feel good either. as for the head smashing etc. during a t.c. i'm sure it does hurt when it happens, but i couldn't tell ya ;)
 
I get a migraine and bitten tongue after I wake up from a seizure. Does that count as hurting? lol
 
Qtowngirl: I meant that that seizures that hurt are uncommon, not that biting your tongue is uncommon.
 
When I have a simple partial seizure I often feel like I have to vomit. The sick to my stomach feeling is very unpleasant. I ask my epilepsy Dr. & she said it had to do with the area of my head that was affected by my closed head injury.
 
who knows. my arm wouldnt stop shaking yesterday, but dedication to my job meant finishing the task at hand first. even if i felt like crap and was two steps from passing out at any moment.
 
If you ever have a psychotic period of seizure it will be pure unimaginable pain and terror. At least mine was, but I'm thinking things will be fine.

Normally I'd had tonic-clonics where it is a total blackout and then waking up in fear and pain with the brainpower of a 3 year old for a while. pain is perceived during levels of consciousness
 
Interesting question. I read a report written by a very bad, sensationalist news agency in the UK yesterday in which it described a particular child's seizures as "excruciating". Thought it was very odd.
 
Often I don't really feel a thing or start to know what's going on until a while after my TC seizures.
I guess that the mental gap could be considered an aura probably. I'm not really sure what to consider an aura, because it's a medical term based on EEG, really, and I've never had an EEG aura.
Buuut, I feel like shit during cycling seizures. At times I'll have like, 3 tonic-clonics within an hour and the time between feels like dreamy, nauseous, and that I-need-cigarettes-food-and-weed-and-to-plonk-on-the-couch-watching-MSNBC-for-several-days sensation.
 
Well, as a lot of people have been saying, the only time that a seizure does hurt is if you hit something during it. There have been times that I have had a seizure and was completely alert during it. Walking and just fall down hitting the floor head first, knowing that there is nothing I can do to stop it. I have seized up while completely aware what is going on. My entire body stiffens for about 30 secs yet I am still awake. If I am around people who do not know about my condition, they may be talking to me, this happens, then they freak out when I "come out of it".
 
When I have a simple partial seizure I often feel like I have to vomit. The sick to my stomach feeling is very unpleasant. I ask my epilepsy Dr. & she said it had to do with the area of my head that was affected by my closed head injury.

I didn't know that vomiting is not common. I always throw up at the end of a seizure.


No pain during the seizure for me either unless I hit my head falling down. Even then, it hurts after the seizure is over. In the past, I was very worried when I felt a seizure was coming and I was not at home. All I wanted was not to be seen and that’s how I got the worst injuries: trying to get off the bus or climbing the stairs to my apartment. Now I don’t care, I just lie down no matter where I am. No new stitches since 2008!

But there is another aspect of epileplsy + pain which is amazing: When a seizure occurs during one of my cluster headache cycles, then it somehow “cures” the pain. I recover from the seizure and the headache is completely gone, like it was never there. Strange!
 
vomiting after a tonic clonic is completely common, aka some do some don't.

vomiting after just a simple partial is not as common. it happens, but is not like the expected after-effects of a convulsion.
 
Matthew I do know that when I have a partial seizure things seem weird...such as watching the TV viewing the pic is ok but the sound is mumbled no clear voices what so ever :rolleyes:

When I've had a grandmal...gut cramps for ages and internal bruising which they found out quite a few years back and that does hurt :eek:
 
Hmm, there is a choice missing and this is the Yes and No choice.

For me most of my seizures start in my right fingers, then moves up to the whole arm, then peters out. Doesn't hurt much, other than the weird feeling in my arm after wards for a few minutes. The tonic clonics, i've been lucky somewhat, i had auto accident that could've been a lot worse then it was. Other TC i've been fortunate to be sitting down.

Now when i was on Lamotrigine, for the first 6 months everything was normal, but after that period of time, my seizures got worse. So much worse, that the next 2 seizures really beat me up. They came on like normal, but these went further than my arm, they really shook me up and tied me up like a pretzel. The second one like that i thought i was going to break my neck. I knew it had to be lamotrigine, since that was the only drug i was on at the time. I had my doc take me off that and moved on to Gabapentin. After changing the meds, the beat me up type seizures also stopped. Whew!!

Cheers


:piano: :pop:
 
Back
Top Bottom