What first triggered your epilepsy, if known? (i.e. first seizure)

What first triggered your epilepsy, if known? (i.e. first seizure)

  • Born with epilepsy

    Votes: 27 9.8%
  • Had an accident (e.g. car accident)

    Votes: 37 13.4%
  • Brain damage (e.g. Brain tumors, stroke, heart attack, infectious diseases)

    Votes: 37 13.4%
  • Hormonal changes (e.g. PMT)

    Votes: 11 4.0%
  • Allergy (e.g. food allergy)

    Votes: 1 0.4%
  • Brought on by stress / tiredness

    Votes: 31 11.2%
  • Eating too little / too much

    Votes: 3 1.1%
  • Withdrawal from drugs - chemist or other

    Votes: 5 1.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 35 12.7%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 89 32.2%

  • Total voters
    276

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I was assualted. Kicked in the head and had my nose broken, one month later I had a major seizure in my sleep.
 
I started having seizures when I was 11 or 12- just when I was starting puberty. Eventually they got so bad that they didn't have much of a pattern. I felt like I was having them all the time. Once I was on medication, the breakthrough seizures I had were only around my period. So I marked down "hormones".
 
I 1st started having seizures when I was about 9 months old, I had Tonic Clonic seizures until I was 2 -3. I went about 21 years seizure free until I started taking seizures again in 2002 when I was 24, which were mainly auras & complex partial.

The seizures I had as a baby happened not long after I had a tetanus injection so we think that is what caused my seizures, although we aren't 100% sure. None of the neurologists/epitiologists I've seen know why I started taking seizures again as an adult after having no seizures for so long.
 
Probably the scar left on my brain from a surgery to an avm. And I belive what firt triggered my seizure was the (too) hot weather
 
Encephalitis

We're not 100% sure, but my neurologist suspects that my epilepsy was caused from having encephalitis at age 16. I remember suffering from many auras and complex-partial seizures aged 17 and 18, and don't recall having them before age 16. At the time, I thought everyone must experience what I was experiencing. And while it bothered me, I didn't tell any doctors. It was only after I was diagnosed with epilepsy (after suffering two generalised seizures in a row aged 19) that I discovered what my 'deja-vu' episodes are ;-)
 
I voted that I was probably born with it although I wasn't diagnosed till I was 15 when i had to go into hospital for surgery on my eyes & they discovered a malformation in the brain but because of the surgery I had to have an anesthetic & 2 weeks after surgery I had my first of many grand mal seizures
 
The Chicken pox. started with a high fever. The doctor did not believe my mother when she told him. She worked for a dentist , I was there one day and he whitnessed a g mal and so my Dr. believed her. They were like Gods back then.
 
The more i think about it, I wonder if I didnt spike a big fever when my tooth was being extracted.. Ive always associated the dentist with extreme pain, he kept giving shot after shot to numb the pain but it hurt until the end, once i got up from the chair the back of my shirt was soaking wet with sweat. So now I'll always wonder if I had just told him to stop would the outcome be different. Guess I'll never know.
 
Looking back for years I think I have had small seizure activity since I was a child, however, my first grand mal was only 2 days after I had multiple nerve blocks in my spine. The doctor that did it wasn't sure one way or another, she did say she would NEVER do that again though. I spent 4.5 months in the hospital after the initial nerve blocks and they did do more of the same nerve blocks in other areas in my spine. And yes things did get even worse. Unfortunately, it hasn't been improved by their absense.
 
I couldn't pick just one, and I don't know which ONE thing caused my first seizures.

I had a seizure cluster in January of this year. I had three tonic-clonic seizures, two in my bed and one at the hospital.

I hadn't eaten anything that day, my daughter was sick with the stomach flu. I was planning on eating after she went to bed, and instead had a seizure. I was actually hungry, and planning my food (the oven may have even been on). I was also dehydrated, though I had been drinking through out the day, it wasn't enough.

At the hospital it was found that my potassium was low, along with the dehydration.

Also, everyone has said "It's stress" and I want to smack them all. Yes, I was stressed out that day. But I have been in far more stressful situations before and since then with no seizures.


However, in looking back over the years, I believe that I used to have absence seizures as a kid. I remember frequently staring off into space at school, or at home. But only for a few seconds at most. I could never bring myself out of them when I noticed them, but after a bit it would "stop" and I could blink or move my head. I remember things would get a little quiet, muffled sounding. I always thought it was normal, something everyone did. But it was more than just staring off and not paying attention because I couldn't make it stop like I could when my mind just wandered.
 
What Triggered My First Seizure??

It was 1986, I was 23 years old, sitting interviewing a Civil Engineer one minute, chucked in the back of an ambulance the next. Once all the tests were done, it was discovered that I had a lesion on my Right Temporal Lobe caused by forceps at birth. But, what had caused it to kick off my seizures aged 23?? My parents were going through a pretty tempestuous divorce at the time, and I was actually working in the same office as the woman my Dad was having an affair with!! Stress was probably too tame a word, good job I wasn't on Keppra then guys, or I would have lumped her one!!! So, stress is the key factor with my Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, and when I finally get my book typed up and published, there are a few examples of this in it, and Dad still blames himself for my epilepsy starting. Lotsalove Lainey XXXX
 
"not sure"

but:
heavy alcoholism (8 yrs sober), several head trauma, broken spine...
 
I marked "not sure".
I was diagnosed at 21 after a huge tonic-clonic at my place of work. However, now that i'm learning my auras and what my Simple Partials feel like, i'm pretty sure i had the simple partials and myoclonic "jumps" for a few years before.

At the time of the first tonic-clonic i was being taken off of Celexa and put onto Zoloft for depression (both of which i hated). So i often wonder if the withdrawl and new chemicals maybe pushed my seizures into a more obvious form.
 
I suppose tiredness was the one if I had to pick one, but I really went all out to try and induce that first seizure.

48 hours awake, drinking for the last 34 of those hours, eating crap and having a lot of caffeine (red bulls and the like).

The rest have been mainly tiredness, but i wonder if I had've been a bit more sensible that weekend, I might not have ever had one...
 
I put down stress/tiredness, though it was actually more than that. I was definitely tired/stressed, because I was in college, but I had still had SOME sleep the night before, but I had also taken a diet pill (in part because I was tired). Now, I had taken diet pills in the past with no issues (ephedra-free every time), but this one time my body freaked out. I guess the combo of not having a ton of sleep and taking the pill caused it (though previously neither of these things were issues, so I suspect there was all ready something going on there).
 
I missed the poll. But mine was the result of brain surgery as an infant(1968 ). I was born with a ventricular brain aneurysm, that caused Hydrocephalus. I needed surgery to clip the aneurysm and, shunt me for the Hydrocephalus.
 
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I had viral encephalitis from the Lacrosse Virus at age 16. I had 3 Grand mals, was put on Keppra for six months and all my doctors thought I was fine, no epilepsy. At age 20 I was brought to the emergency room after exhibiting signs of petit mals. Diagnosed with Complex Partial Seizures there and put back on Keppra, this time for life. I originally got the Lacrosse virus from a mosquitoes bite, and I now hold a personal vendetta against mosquitoes!
 
I don't know for sure. It may have been stress--it was right after I got a really stressful restaurant job that they started happening. Stress can be a trigger for me, so it's possible. I was a teenager, though, so it may have had something to do with all the process of becoming an adult. Who knows? I know seizures run in my family though--uncle with childhood seizures, and a cousin with seizures.
 
I love that jemsister name. Because we are all jems are we not. I got mine from the chicken pox is a virus. I had a few grand mal and then they threw me on phenobarbatol. The neurologist back then did not have much to talk about. My mom said I had a lot of staring times that she thought were cute. It runs in my family to. But I got the but end of it, except my son has myoclonic seizures as do I. He is 14. Born in 1998. I consider you good luck.
 
Mine were a result of hormonal changes. It was 1980 I was newly pregnant with my first baby. I actually started out with simple partial seizures. After a few years of living with simple partial seizures mine worsened and I began having complex partial seizures. The seizures continued on with all hormonal changes.
 
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