Hello to everyone. As you can see, I'm new to this forum, I was looking for information about epilepsy, and I found this community. I hope I'm not posting in the wrong section.
You don't need to read everything. I just wanted to provide extra details in case you needed more information, but if you want to go right to the point, just read the questions in bold.
My mother (54 years old) has had tonic-clonic epilepsy since year 2003. To summarize a normal episode: after a loud moan, she falls to the floor and seizures start; they last for 20-30 seconds. After they stop, she starts breathing, although irregularly and with difficulty. It takes about 5 minutes for her to recover consciousness and after the episode she feels tired, numb, and nervous. The seizures episodes always occur during sleep and on 3 occasions she fell to the floor because of her bad habit of sleeping on the edge of her huge bed.
Fortunately, no seizure episode has happened while she was alone and medication (valproic acid) has worked quite well; she has had only 6 or 7 episodes during the last 8-9 years since she started the treatment and all of them have occurred because she had intentionally stopped taking the medications or reduced the daily dose (in December 2011 for the last time).
The only thing I am concerned about is the fact that I won't always be able to spend the night in the same house as her. She will sometimes have to spend the night alone in her house for several weeks or months (she's a widow, my father died in 2002), and although medication has worked quite well, I'm always afraid that she might intentionally stop taking it again and another seizure episode might come.
My question is: how can a person deal with tonic-clonic seizures when living alone? considering the fact that my mother's seizure episodes have always occurred during sleep, what is the worst thing that could happen if she has a seizure episode while she is alone? have you had similar experiences related to seizure episodes when being alone?
As I said, medication has worked quite well, she has not had a seizure episode for 8 months, and the possibilities of another one coming are quite low. However, every time she has a new episode, I spend many months trying to recover from the trauma: I start having problems to sleep at night and every noise or sound I hear at night makes me wake up again thinking it is my mom having another seizure episode. This thought makes me terrified of the idea of leaving her alone (I've read so many horrible epilepsy-related experiences on the internet, that sometimes I think I worry too much, but I just can't avoid it...).
I'm sorry for the length of my first entry, and if I'm posting in the wrong section, please tell me.
Thanks for reading
You don't need to read everything. I just wanted to provide extra details in case you needed more information, but if you want to go right to the point, just read the questions in bold.
My mother (54 years old) has had tonic-clonic epilepsy since year 2003. To summarize a normal episode: after a loud moan, she falls to the floor and seizures start; they last for 20-30 seconds. After they stop, she starts breathing, although irregularly and with difficulty. It takes about 5 minutes for her to recover consciousness and after the episode she feels tired, numb, and nervous. The seizures episodes always occur during sleep and on 3 occasions she fell to the floor because of her bad habit of sleeping on the edge of her huge bed.
Fortunately, no seizure episode has happened while she was alone and medication (valproic acid) has worked quite well; she has had only 6 or 7 episodes during the last 8-9 years since she started the treatment and all of them have occurred because she had intentionally stopped taking the medications or reduced the daily dose (in December 2011 for the last time).
The only thing I am concerned about is the fact that I won't always be able to spend the night in the same house as her. She will sometimes have to spend the night alone in her house for several weeks or months (she's a widow, my father died in 2002), and although medication has worked quite well, I'm always afraid that she might intentionally stop taking it again and another seizure episode might come.
My question is: how can a person deal with tonic-clonic seizures when living alone? considering the fact that my mother's seizure episodes have always occurred during sleep, what is the worst thing that could happen if she has a seizure episode while she is alone? have you had similar experiences related to seizure episodes when being alone?
As I said, medication has worked quite well, she has not had a seizure episode for 8 months, and the possibilities of another one coming are quite low. However, every time she has a new episode, I spend many months trying to recover from the trauma: I start having problems to sleep at night and every noise or sound I hear at night makes me wake up again thinking it is my mom having another seizure episode. This thought makes me terrified of the idea of leaving her alone (I've read so many horrible epilepsy-related experiences on the internet, that sometimes I think I worry too much, but I just can't avoid it...).
I'm sorry for the length of my first entry, and if I'm posting in the wrong section, please tell me.
Thanks for reading
