napping sleep and epilepsy

[mymanuelita]

My 7 year old daughter was diagnosed with absence seizure epilepsy last year. She is taking ethosuximide twice daily and she sleeps a total of about 12 hours per day. Usually she takes a 2 hour nap and then sleeps about 10 hours at night. Does anyone else have a similar situation? Will her need for so much sleep diminish? Our doctor wants to try to reduce the nap. We have tried that and she has more seizures, increased irritability and crankiness. She has a very limited life as a result. Any suggestions? Thank you.

 

[Nakamova]

Has she had an overnight sleep study done? If her sleep is qualitatively poor -- either due to seizures or other health issues (like apnea) -- then that could explain why she needs so much of it. It's also possible that the medication is interfering with her sleep or causing fatigue (Ethosuximide side effects include lethargy, fatigue, disturbances of sleep, and aggressiveness). If that's the case, perhaps she could reduce the dose or try something a different medication.

 

[mymanuelita]

Thank you. That all makes sense.

 

[Janus]

Lack of sleep, continually, has made me have seizures and my friend's friend that has E has to take a nap every day to keep seizures at bay. I do not know how much she sleeps on a regular night though. Its when i had several nights in a row that i could not get more than about 4 hours sleep ( i have to catch a middle of the night bus-express to Seattle for a couple hours to get to the E docs 'specialists' in a real town like Seattle). Then i have big seizure in downtown. Drag, man. I prayed "don't harsh my mellow, man, please"

 

[donnajane]

My 2yr old was this week started on 1/4 tablet of Clobazam to help with the quality of his sleep which will hopefully help with his event's. The first night was fantastic and he "slept" through, well almost, 10hrs- this was the first time in his life he had done "slept through" and then only had a 30min nap at child care. Totally unusal for him. No event's for the day. Sadly it lasted only one night, his nureologist told us we can increase it to 1/2 a tablet next week to see how it goes. What we have found though that even the 1/4 of a tablet has allowed him to get what we think is a better "quality" sleep first part of the night and so far we have not seen any of his "new" type of seziures overnight. He also takes Tegretol in the morning and at night.
Hope you can get some answers soon as I can only start to imagine how needing to have a 2hr nap in the afternoon at 7yrs old can affect her day.
Donna