Not realizing the time

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valeriedl

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I notice when I come out or am starting to come out of a seizure I'll be messed up on what time it is.

I usually think it's early morning or late at night and just get in bed. I had one at 4 this afternoon and thought it was 4am, couldn't figure out why the sun was out and I didn't have my PJs on. But I just went and crawled in bed, fully dressed. When I came completely too I was wondering why I was in bed with jeans and a sweat shirt on.

I had another one once at noon and when I was starting to come out of it I thought it was midnight, so I just got in bed.

I can read the time on the clock but I don't know if it's am or pm.

Does anyone else do this too?
 
I have never done that with the time, but I often have a problem knowing what day it is after one of my partials. Looking at a calendar doesn't help because I don't know the date or the day, so a calendar is meaningless. I have to look at my cell phone which actually says the day of the week. Stuff like that is really frustrating, and makes me wonder how much permanent damage is done to our brains (if any) every time those things happen. I'm hopeful that the VNS will help.
 
I always lose time when I've been having multiple complexes during the day. I'll forget to eat, take a break, etc. I'll have been working for 6 hours, and then realize what time it is, and that I should have already gone and been back from lunch. Slightly fun because it's like a tiny fast forward button for me.
 
I would be the same way coming out of a tonic clonic. I think of it as a anomaly similar to jamais vu. Unfamiliar with what you should be familiar.
 
I think of it as a anomaly similar to jamais vu. Unfamiliar with what you should be familiar.
That's a very good way of describing it.

I visualise it as the brain trying to make a best guess whilst not having all the info it usually has. Seizures definitely obliterate my timeline, and whilst post-ictal a lot of my recent memory too, so if it sees '12', can't remember the previous '12' and has no timeline to reference, it's a 50/50 chance of it being right- and it then seems to stick with this new timeline it starts up till the memories come back and it knows better...

IANAN but that's how I explain it when I experience it :)
 
When I come out of a seizure I don't realize how I got to where I am, i.e I'm in a different part of the house and I see myself doing something that I don't remember starting. For instance I see myself doing my hair, washing dishes, or on the phone.

Later I look at the time and it's 15 to 30 minutes later from what I was doing right before I had my seizure. Sometimes I don't realize I had a seizure until hours later, because I loose a sense of time so bad that I see something changed in the house, and think.....when did I do that?

It's like your life on a D.V.D, and scenes being skipped over, but "not realizing the time" you arrived at, but you continue going.
 
It kind of reminds me when your watching a dvd that is all scratched up...it pauses here and there and skips forward. You know somethings missing, but don't know what. A month or so after my grandpa passed away I had a bad T/C and thought I was like 5 or 6 and my grandpa was gonna be picking me up for school soon...I thought it was around like 6 am on my first day of school. I don't think I've gone back that far since then though.
 
About 5 years ago I had what I think was a partial seizure in the early hours of the morning, I had written it in my seizure diary.
This particular morning I woke up about 4:30am to go to the toilet so I got out of bed & instead of going straight to the toilet I went into the spare room to get something which I put on my washing machine then went to the toilet. After going to the toilet I got undressed & had a shower. After I had my shower I went into my room to get dressed & looked at my clock & it was just after 5:00am. I couldn't work out why my alarm was still on at 1st then realised I'd gotten up 3 1/2 hours to early (I had the alarm set for 8am) :paperbag:.

I had decided that since I was up I may as well stay up so I went out to have some breakfast, my meds & play on the computer. I started to get a headache about 5:45am so I decided to go back to bed. I ended up going back to sleep until the alarm woke me at 8:00am.
 
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I absolutely can relate to this and it's one of the things a friend reminds me of when I want to deny I'm having seizures. It's helped me to get rid of all my clocks and just use a smart phone that adjusts for daylight savings, has multiple alarms, and can be set to military time so I can't mix up the am and pm. Still, I will sometimes be in bed with clothes on and wake up in the middle of the evening.

I think crawling into bed is just something I do after a string of absence seizures. When I was a little girl I used to try and sleep in school coat closets or under a flip up desk. I also used to give my older sister code words that she was supposed to say if I was awake. When my "spells" were bad or close together I became convinced that I was dreaming that I was awake but was really asleep. I needed my sister to tell me if I was awake.
 
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I use military time and I would still freak out thinking something was wrong....
 
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