Migraine Aura or Seizure?

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kate705

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Hi there,

I wondered if anyone else had a bit of trouble telling Migraine/Seizure apart?

I have had Classical Migraine since childhood and thought I knew all the signs easily until I started to develop 'episodes' of what are suspected temporal lobe seizures about 18 months ago.

I have had some 'seizures' that are more easily recognisable but recently things are more confusing....

For example, last night I was talking to a friend. My eyesight started to get strange ie could only see part of her face. I thought..ok this is a migraine..but then I began to sort of sink into myself I felt small and distant. I heard her say to my husband something about a dream (neither of them knew I was in this state). It began to make sense to me - I am going back to my dream and this is all making sense now. I opened my mouth to speak but I couldn't and felt frozen. The feeling passed quite quickly and I was then sweating.

I had the 'scintillating scotoma' of Migraine but then hardly any headache. I felt sick and exhausted for awhile. The whole thing was over in an hour - the weird peak of the episode only lasted for a couple of minutes.

Can you have a seizure AND migraine at the same time? This might be a silly question not sure. By the way I am going into hospital soon for a VEEG for 5 days, waiting for an appointment. I just needed to ask as I have had 2 episodes of this type of thing in a month. :ponder:

Thank You!!
 
I have not been diagnosed with migraines but I do get I guess the best word for it is disturbances in my eyes starts out as a flashing then with in minutes it overtakes my whole vision and can not focus on my computer tv ect. The whole episode last about 20 minutes and there is no headache afterwards. My epileptolgist thinks its probably just an ocular migraine or side effect to one of the medications Im on. The main reason he thinks its not any kind of seizure is the because of the length. The best I can tell you is that seizures and migraines are very closely related both can have an aura. I would bring it up with you neurologist and if it happens durring the video eeg I would definitely push the button.
 
I don't have migraines, but what you described sounds a LOT what I've experienced in some of my simple partials - especially before I was on seizure medications. It sounds like the "dreamlike state" that is common in temporal lobe epilepsy - at least that's what my neurologist said when I explained it to him :)
 
Before the initial onset of my seizures (grand mals), I used to get the scintillating scotoma associated with migraine, but no headache. I just assumed they were migraines anyway, and they happened infrequently, so I didn't give them much thought. But since having the big seizures, I've never had the scintillating scotoma again -- which makes me wonder if they weren't in fact seizure-related, just closer to one end of the spectrum.

I do think it can be difficult to distinguish seizures from migraines since their symptoms overlap experientially. You might find this link discussing the differences and similarities useful: http://professionals.epilepsy.com/wi/print_section.php?section=migraine
 
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