Hi Krista,
Thanks for writing this, it actually helps give some perspective on my own situation. Hopefully I can contribute something useful in return!
I have a fairly wide range of (mostly) temporal lobe symptoms which seem to be exclusively nocturnal or triggered at the cusp of falling asleep. Some symptoms, mostly the more infrequent ones (at present, fingers crossed) are pretty unmistakeable seizure activity of some type, such as ecstatic seizures or other overpowering emotions including fear, often accompanied by strange bodily shaking or limb movement etc, while unconscious. Other symptoms actually occur more often however, and are frequently close to what you just described. Now, I know I've tended to suffer sleep paralysis since I was a kid (I don't know whether this shares a common cause with seizures or it's simply a coincidence - seizures at any rate did not start till I was a young adult). It's taken me quite a while to be reasonably sure in my own mind that these other types of seizure activity are probably just that, not simply reading too much into sleep paralysis episodes.
Sleep paralysis is possible to deal with if you simply refrain from panicking at the fact you can't move. If I accept I'm asleep and can't move, and that is natural at this stage, the panic that is accociated with the condition can usually be staved off. It's actually quite an interesting experience to be conscious, but not able to move. This makes no difference if it seems to be a seizure type event - it is something that simply has a physiological need to happen regardless of how you choose to view it. Sleep paralysis is just lying there, trying to accept that I am asleep and that if I can't move it won't harm me. Often I have weird dreams with it, usually about resolving the situation by getting up (in the dream) and going and doing something, which turns into another dream. Or maybe I just wake up.
In a seizure, all this changes. My heartrate can increase to sometimes scary rates, as though something outside of myself is driving it. This is usually accompanied by a raise in temperature, and commonly all kinds of strange emotional and auditory or visual sensations (including that buzzing in the ears you mention) - not usually scary in the way that you would expect to provoke such a violent physiologicical reaction, mostly just strange, vivid, rushed, and nonsensical. Occasionally it can be accompanied by intense, apparently causeless fear (which I presume is a fear aura), but most often by a strange numb, warm, fuzzy kind of surging feeling that is impossible to describe adequately. Sometimes, and particularly if it gets bad, this will be followed by either my upper body jerking spasmodically or some kind of limb movments (usually clenching and unclenching one or both hands, or my hands trembling with a kind of fluttering movment - this most often affects just one side). Sometimes my eyes come open during this and I can see (or think I can see!) as well as feel what is going on, which makes it seem very like sleep paralysis, except for all the OTHER symptoms. Normally if I get many body movments my eyes will come open, which makes it if possible even more exasperating. Well, it's also possible that this happens without me knowing about it too, but what you don't know about...
I often get only some of these symptoms, rather than having to run the whole gamut. Obviously the fewer I get, the harder it is to know what to actually call what happened. Generally however, the most distinctive features are the raised heartrate and temperature that seems driven by something outside my control, the strange warm numbness flooding through my body that I mentioned (somewhere midway between a physical and emotional sensation, it's very strange indeed, neither exactly unpleasant or entirely pleasant) a humming in my ears, and, lately, the tendency to make some kind of quite involuntary vocalisation when it first starts.
Most of the recent symptoms I've had (or at least KNOW I had) have been very brief in duration - I haven't had the strange feelings for more than a few seconds so far as I can tell, then wake from sleep (or am roused to full wakefulness from a state very near to it) feeling disoriented and weird for a little while. Always I have that strange indefinable feeling and sound in the ears, nearly always at present an involuntary vocalisation, and always the raised heartrate and temperature, which persist for quite a while after waking. A few times lately, I've had strange visual distortions that have persisted for a while after these very brief seizure things after I've otherwise been fully awake and alert. I was told by helpful contributers here (thanks Endless, I think) when it first happened that it was probably something called "Alice in Wonderland" syndrome, which seemed to fit when I looked it up.
http://scarlton.hubpages.com/hub/AliceinWonderlandSyndrome I've never had this particular symptom except in the immediate aftermath of the very brief seizures which wake me up; they are probably part of the aftermath of the strange neural activity.
I've never to my knowledge had any kind of seizure while I was wide awake, by the way.
