In March 2015, I had a tonic clonic, which I thought was out of the blue. In going over my history with my neurologist, we realized I started having absence seizures as a child. I clearly remember the episodes where I'd get a strong deja vu feeling, accompanied with a headache, strange taste in my mouth, and phantom smell, which I describe as "electrical". This happened quite a bit when I was younger, but I never mentioned them to my parents because although I thought they were strange, it never dawned on me that it could be serious.
In my mid-20s, I started having random "panic attacks". That's what they were diagnosed as. There was no external reason for them, so I never did understand how the doctor came to that conclusion. I also started hearing things that weren't there.
In my early 30s, I was driving and suddenly blacked out for a few seconds, causing me to hit the curb.
I then began having episodes where I felt very lightheaded and like I was going to faint, but never did.
Finally last year, I had the tonic clonic. I was diagnosed with complex partials (left temporal lobe), secondary generalized.
The interesting thing of it all is that when my son was a baby, he had febrile seizures, so that was what I consider my first "real" experience with seizures. At the age of 2, my nephew (my sister's son) was diagnosed with epilepsy. This year, that same sister was diagnosed with epilepsy. She had migraines as a child, nothing for years, and then recently experienced 5 tonic clonics. She too was diagnosed with complex partials (left temporal lobe), secondary generalized. So this made me want to dig a little further into family history. It turns out several people (on my mom and dad's side) have epilepsy. This definitely made me think a lot about familial genetic similarities.