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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Brain damage we think, from a lack of oxygen when I was born. I inhaled amniotic fluid and had to have my lungs pumped.
 
Hi PlumeAgate, welcome to CWE!!

This is the best forum you will find on the internet for epilepsy. The forum started out of love by Bernard for his wife Stacy. That love has permeated throughout the whole forum.
 
I was a forceps delivery in 1963, interestingly though, I didn't actually have my first seizure, until 1986, triggered by stress from my parents's divorce. I had a Temporal Lesionectomy in 2000, so at least there was something there to remove and calm things down in my head. I find that stress is the worst cause of my seizures, and although I still have them, despite a Right Temporal Re-section in 2008, things aren't as bad as they were. Still smiling! Happy New Year to you all!
 
i wrote about it as it was happening before i realized it was happening.



This is more or less how I developed viral encephalitis

So after spending all night up stressing over the quality of my work, I neglected to find out if the newspaper even ran my photos from “The Ride Of Silence.” Plus I am pretty sure that I wrote my phone number down incorrectly on the contact sheet I filled out. I also found out I missed a chance to be on the front page of the newspaper by taking “ride you bike to work day” off from work.

Actually last week kept me pretty busy. The latter part of my week was spent out at lake McMurty riding the mountain bike trails and testing out snack foods for work. Me and one of my co-workers spent several days out riding the trails, jumping creeks and bouncing off trees so we could report our findings to the trail committee. Honestly the effort kicked my ass. I remember standing in the shop on Saturday thing to myself, ” my left leg hurts and my right leg in numb.” When my co-worker walks up and ask me if I am riding, I responded, “of course.”

During the course of our trips out to the lake I have pulled upwards 15 ticks off of my legs. To make matter worse, when I unlaced my shoes I found about 6 ticks on the tongue underneath the laces. Needless to say I just left those shoes outside.

So late last month I gave serious mountain biking a few tries before deciding it really wasn’t for me. While out on each excursion one of the things i had to contend with was the massive tick population in Ok. I didn’t think much of it because we don;t have aggressive ticks in Alabama. Anyway a few weeks later I developed a rash but it went away in a few days. Then on Saturday I had to leave work early because my knee really hurt. I got home iced my knee and pretty much passed out there. When I woke up later on that night I felt like hell. I had an insane headache it hurt to move my eyes, and a fever that was quickly ramping up. I figured it was just the flu or something and that I would try to sleep it off. Sunday passed and I still had a fever, Sarah told me she was afraid I was going to burn her.

Monday came and my fever broke that morning after near overdosing myself on Aspirin. We went to an unrelated doctors appointment I had, and then headed back home. On the way home she was speaking with her mom who told her that if my fever was above 103 to take me to the hospital. We stopped got thermometer and proceeded to check myself. I got pissed because it read 104. So I went and wasted nearly 3 hours in a clinic for “We don’t know whats wrong with you, it might be ticks take these pills pay the nurse out front, if it gets worse don’t come back to us. go strait to the emergency room.”

And the pills are the best part, you have to take them on an empty stomach or you will throw up, if you eat any dairy product while on them you get severe diarrhea, and they make me too dizzy to ride my bike, not that I had a lot of that planned but it would be nice.
 
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Don't Know

I went to the doctor years ago because I got little jerks & i'm talking just a second jump & it was nothing I really considered to bother me but none the less my mum dragged me to the doctors, put on drugs & had my first seizure. This was completely new for me never in my life had I been put on drugs & been even introduced to epilepsy. I then went to one of them brain scans where I was diagnosed, I still don't believe I had epilepsy until after I was put on drugs & going to the doctors in the first place will always be my biggest regret.
 
Because I was adopted from Russia, I don't know if I was born with it or if I have a medical history with epilepsy. My earliest memory is that the there was no more chairs so I was the only one who had to stand while eating. I remember eating soup. Suddenly, I felt dizzy and fainted. When I woke up, I was in a small room and was told to sleep. I don't remember having another attack until I was 10-years-old.
 
Some people never find out the cause of their seizures these are Cryptogenic seizures, some are Idiopathic, whereupon their seizures are hereditary, and others, like me have Symptomatic epilepsy, where a cause is known, what fascinates me in my continuing studies of epilepsy, is Non Epileptic Attack Disorder, aka Psuedo seizures, wow, if someone tried to tell me I was having psychological seizures rather than clinical, I would not be happy, not from what I've read anyway, although, it is apparantly possible to have both.
 
I'm guessing hereditary--my mom had an absence seizure (only one) and an abnormal EEG, and my son had a couple of 'suspicious convulsive episodes' (thank GOD no more) when he was an infant. I once had a neorologist insist that all epilepsy is a result of a head injury, and that i HAD to have had a head injury at some point. In a bizarre twist of cruel irony, he retired, because he had a head injury himself in a car accident and felt he could no longer adequately perform his job (no i don't find that funny at all, just a little ironic). Having recently had my own car accident and head injury to add on to my lifetime of epileptic fun, I definitely don't wish that on anyone!!!
 
I was withdrawing from Levofloxacin (levaquin) when I had my first seizure. My doctor, when he decides to be helpful, likes to say that the levaquin flipped the switch to start the seizure now we just have to cope with it being in the on position.
 
I don't know how many times I have told this story. But now there is more to it. I had the chickenpox when I was ten and that was when I was diagnosed. I had a g-mal seizure. The Dr.s said that I probably had it earlier. My brother went in for an eeg about the same time for really bad headaches. They did not find anything then, but he did end up having myoclonic seizures (non medicated) and his son has had a seizure. Not on meds. So some where in the family, I think my dad's , it has been inherited.
 
I had a stroke in July 2012. I started having simple partials immediately afterwards but I had no idea what they were and thought people would think I was crazy. Especially my psych and therapist. I finally told my therapist and she thought I was suffering from depersonalization.

In May 2013 I had my first "BIG ONE" (In my car in Mc Donalds drive thru, thankfully I had just put my e-brake on). I have a leasion on my right temporal lobe that is caused by my stroke that is the cause of my epilepsy. Simply/complex partials and generalized.
 
For me, i had a baseball type tumor removed. The day they found it I had experienced my first grand mal seizure. What a trip that was. Turn out the lights. Luckily i was sitting down. I believe the removal of the BT was what is causing my seizures, such a huge tumor removed, there has to be some scars left behind. That was almost 8 yrs ago. Seizure have come on a regular basis, normally they were coming once a month, now they seem to be going down to once every other month.

No matter how bad life gets, it's still a lot better than the alternative, six feet under, with no life.

:piano: :pop:
 
Yes, I think many of us would have chosen more than one answer. I was also adopted and don't know my family history. My adoptive mother died when I was 18 so I have no one to ask about my childhood. I first experienced deja vu feelings when I was pregnant with my 3rd son in 1979. That's why I think it's hormonal. My real issues surfaced in 2006 when I was going thru menopause, stress at work, going back to school, dealing with bipolar son and insomnia. I have never had a grand mal. My worst episode was after my husband of 38 yrs. passed away in 2008. My sons took me to ER but was just given Ativan and told to take my Keppra regularly.
M
 
Hi marika853, My last child was born in 1979.

I also have a bipolar son and I have insomnia.

Ativan is the best medicine for seizures. It stops them right away. I have Lorazepam that I take for emergency seizures. Lorazepam is the same as Ativan.

I am on Keppra, as well. We have a lot in common.

Zolt, I am sorry that you had a tumor the size of a baseball. You must have been in a lot of pain. Are you still having pain?
 
No sign of it in any test, baffles my docs but not me, its the stress that hit me at middle age, floored me with a grand mal!!
 
"Zolt, I am sorry that you had a tumor the size of a baseball. You must have been in a lot of pain. Are you still having pain?"

Actually there was no pain for me and i'm not saying that because i'm a man but because there was none. :) They gave me a bottle of oxycodone, but i didn't' have to use it. I used it once, but that was only to see if i can get some sleep. The steroids i was on would not let me sleep more than 2 hrs at night and that was horrible. Had i know that i would of definitely asked for sleeping pills.

"There are no pain receptors in the brain itself. But the meninges (coverings around the brain), periosteum (coverings on the bones), and the scalp all have pain receptors. Surgery can be done on the brain and technically the brain does not feel that pain."

http://www.brainline.org/content/2012/07/can-the-brain-itself-feel-pain.html

Cheers,
Zolt


:piano: :pop:
 
I voted accident as that is most likely the cause. As to which one, I'm unsure. I was in a motorcycle accident last spring and then totaled my car in February this year. I've also had many other head injuries through the years. There's a hole in the wall at the bottom of the stairs to prove it.
 
Head injury whilst skiing. This is what we think. When I was about 15 or 16 I had a pretty bad skiing accident when I way overshot the landing jumping. I recall completing my trick (a triple daffy) and I was still going up, like way up. I remember hitting hard on the flat and my friend saying "dude that's the most air I ever saw any one get, rad dude". Apparently I was found wondering the ski hut and my younger brother took me home. I kept calling my friend asking what happened over and over. This went untreated, well until now. I began having tonic-clonics. Wheee
 
I was born with it, I have gray matter heterotopia. It's something like a brain disorder. I had my first symptoms when i was 15 years old and may have been triggered by anxiety and fatigue since i was one year before finishing high school and was studying for university entrance exams.
 
I chose 'born with it', I was born with a large scar on the right side of my head which the dr.'s in the delivery room believed were from excess fluid in the womb and my Twin pushing me up to our Mother's ribs and I bumped/rubbed my head on them which then injured my brain, so I could've voted 'accident' too!
 
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