Epilepsy Forum - Is single seizure epilepsy

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Q: Is single seizure epilepsy

asked by: kfassanella on March 17th, 2008

New User

Hello, I am new to the board. My name is Kevin, I am a 28 year old male from Frederick Maryland. I know this might be a lot to read, but I am looking for people who can help me, or people who can at least help me relate to what is happening with my body. I appreciate everybody who takes the time to read my long story.

About a month and half ago I had my first and to this day only seizure. A little background on myself, I have always been a rather healthy person. I try to eat right, I exercise regularly and I have always had a good mental state of health. About 8 years ago, I had a little bit of a drug problem. Not so much a problem, but that I had experimented A LOT with drugs. I was an avid Ecstasy user; I had used LSD numerous times, and was developing quite a cocaine habit. All of these things stopped in 2001 when I left behind all the people that were causing me to head down a horrible path and I pulled myself out from the drugs and sort of reinvented myself. Until about July of 2007 I was a heavy binge drinker. I would only drink on the weekends and usually only on Saturday nights; however I would consume mass quantities of alcohol and would often black out from drinking so much. After meeting my current girlfriend Christy, I decided that the life of a “drunken frat boy” was not entirely how I wanted to live so I decided to cut my drinking back tremendously and only drink socially once or twice a month. My only vice now is Caffeine. I was drinking 2-3 large cups (20 ounces) per day, and I was occasionally taking green tea extract fat burning pills.

On February 13th 2008 I was at work and I was going about my normal routine. I usually leave to go home for lunch since my house is only a mile away from my office. I stopped by the bank before lunch to make a deposit and then went straight to my house. Upon getting home, I had lunch and I went upstairs into my room to check my personal email. As I was typing an email, suddenly my hands started cramping up and I started to hyperventilate. I completely panicked because I wasn’t sure what was going on. I tried to get out of my desk chair but I collapsed on the floor and passed out. Right before losing consciousness my last thought was that I was dying. I woke up about 45 minutes later. I had no recollection of how I got there, or how long I had been out. I looked up at the clock and thought "OH CRAP, I NEED TO GET BACK TO WORK". I jumped in my car and started driving back to work. I remember nothing of the morning. As I sat at a stop light in front of my building I looked over to see my deposit slip from the bank and I had no recollection of going to the bank. Once arriving back at work, my co-workers noticed that I was literally stumbling around in a state of confusion. One of my colleagues asked me if I was ok and I started sobbing hysterically and informed her that I think I had either had a stroke or a brain seizure. She immediately took me to the hospital and I was admitted to the emergency room.

In the emergency room I really don’t remember much of anything until about 3 hours after it all had happened. They did a CT scan, and they took blood samples. I was released to my girlfriend after spending a very confusing 5 hours in the ER.

After the seizure I immediately went to see a neurologist, and they wanted me to get a MRI and an EEG test completed. My MRI test came back with nothing remarkable and everything seemed normal. Fast forward 2 weeks later and I go back to the Hospital to have my EEG test done.

Now keep in mind, before having my EEG test, I had felt great. I had no issues, no relapse of a seizure and honestly, I hadn’t felt more refreshed in years. I was sleeping well, my workouts at the gym were going great, and everything in my personal life was going very well. During the EEG test they did the strobe light test. At first, things were fine and the light didn’t bother me at all. Once the pace started to pick up, I started to feel a little uneasy. I was seeing things behind my closed eyelids and I was feeling very odd. The technician cranked up the juice till the blinks were about 30 blinks per second.

Immediately I started to feel like I was losing control. I started getting this panicked feeling rushing through my body, followed by a feeling that I can’t describe. All I could think was “I am about to have a seizure!” I asked the technician to stop and he did. He did a few more tests and told me that what I was feeling was completely normal.

Now here is the strange part. After having my EEG test I immediately started having problems that I could not explain. Mood swings, loss of motivation and in incredible intense fear of having another seizure. On top of that, I was having this tingling sensation in my right hand, and for a short period of time, I felt like I was losing motor functions in my hand.

The panic feeling was the worst of it thought. I could be doing anything from watching TV, to sleeping, to taking a shower and this intense sensation of panic would overcome me and I would get the feeling that I was getting when the strobe was on full blast.

I went back for my one month follow up with my neurologist and I told him how I was feeling and he said “oh that is normal, having a seizure is a very traumatic experience and you may have SOME anxiety.” Well, replace the word SOME with LOTS. He prescribed me a small dosage of Xanax.

This past weekend, I drove further than a few miles for the first time in over a month and a half. I was driving on the high way and suddenly, all I could think about was having a seizure. It was consuming me. The next thing I know I started getting the tingling feeling and I was panicking just like I was when I got my first seizure. I immediately pulled over to the side of the road and sat for almost an hour before I calmed down and before I felt I could bring myself to pull back onto the road. I finally made it to my destination and went out to eat with friends, we were in a dimly lit restaurant and the entire night I was a complete mess. I was panicking every couple of minutes, and I must have gone to the restroom over 10 times because I had drank so much water trying to calm myself down.

Everything in my life has changed in a short period of time all because of this stupid seizure. I am losing my temper much quicker, I am having a hard time focusing at work, having a hard time paying attention, my sex life has become non existent because the over stimulation makes me panic, and the fear of having another seizure is just consuming everything in my life. I am not looking for answers, I am more or less just looking to know that how I am feeling is normal. And that that everything will be ok. If anybody could give me any input or any sort of advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for reading, I know it’s a lot to take in.

Cheers,

Kevin

Replies(6)

TMJWorld

replied on March 17th, 2008

Extremely eHealthy

welcome to the board? what was you diagnosis?

kfassanella

replied on March 17th, 2008

New User

My doctor told me that "hopefully" it was just a freak thing and said that It was likely just stress related.

My job does tend to be a tad stressfull, My parents are moving across the country, and I am in the middle of looking at purchasing my first home and moving in with my girlfriend. So there IS plenty of stressfull things in my life, but it just scares me that the doctor couldnt actually give me a real answer.

barbaranne42353

replied on May 27th, 2009

New User

1 seizure only

4 days ago, I had an EEG done due to a fall and subsequent hit to my head 3 months ago. During the fast strobe, I also had seizure activity. I, also, am scared to death about the implications. Is 1 seizure innocuous? Is there any such thing?

twistingoak

replied on June 3rd, 2009

New User

You need to have two seizures to have epilepsy. Furthermore they must be Epileptical seizures - not all seizures are epileptical seizures. A non-epileptical seizure is a real seizure, but the level of electricity in the brain is different, and those typically only occur around other people (doesn't mean you are conciously bringing them on) - usually as a result of psychological stress, or the result of pushing yourself to far, like running a marathon.

Having seizure activity during the strobe does imply epileptical activity - did the doctor mention epilepsy? But keep in mind that seizure activity means a lower level of electricity than a seizure, and you haven't mentioned if this was epileptical activity.

Lots of people only have one seizure - they don't have epilepsy. its much better to only have one. Every seizure increases your risk of a future one and makes it more difficult to treat.

You are doing some very wrong things if you do have epilepsy

1) There should be zero caffeine at all times - it only takes a tiny bit to bring on another seizure. You should not be having anything at all to do with green tea - an overdose of green tea, equivalent to 3 cups a day, increases your chance of having a seizure.

2) You do not want to burn fat. Fat in food is the epileptic person's best friend. If you are trying to lose weight, than eat a high fat diet - Doing so tricks your liver into thinking your starving, so whether than converting the carbs and sugar in your diet into glucose, your liver burns your body's fat stores. This diet dramatically reduce your risk of seizures (and lessens the risk heart attacks, and almost completely eliminates the potential of dying from a heart attack, as an added benefit) plus you'll loose weight very quickly even though chances are you'll be doubling or tripling your caloric intake - you also will never be hungry because you can eat plenty of steaks, chicken, lamb etc. Just try to use healthy fats like olive oil instead of butter. You should not be eating any fruit - because of its sugar and watery content, its bad for seizure, the max for people on seizure diets is typically 2 strawberries a week, so I just say avoid it all. And since they don't sell high fat yogurt in the store, if you buy it, mix heavy cream in with it, to increase its fat - stony fields is good for this. Look up the modified atkins diet for epilepsy - its pretty easy to follow, you just won't be eating packaged or canned foods again aside from pork rinds, nuts, and the occasional small root beer. Its just the atkins diet with no protein, calorie or fluid restrictions, but keep in mind that soy triggers seizures - this is more of a problem for females but some men are influenced to so stay away from products like tofu and soy milk. If you have low testosterone do not touch anything at all with soy in it.

4) The good news is, its very possible that your seizure was the result of your lowering your seizure threshold from consuming caffeine, fat burning pills, and green tea extract. The bad news is, that you may have been having a lot of the smaller, hard to diagnose seizures before then - partial seizures are difficult to show up on EEGs. A trained neurologist has difficulty identifying absence seizures even when specifically looking for them. And basically anything can be a seizure so its really difficult to tell - did you think you hear something that wasn't there? suddenly start daydreaming? not hear an entire sentence said to you? forget what you were doing? suddenly get tired for no reason at all? have someone claim you did or say something that never happened? All of those, plus a whole lot more are seizure manifestations. The kind of seizure you reported having here is the rarest type to have though its the one the public is most familiar with.

39fallingapart

replied on June 3rd, 2009

New User

Kevin,
I understand completely your fear and anxiety. My daughter has been having seizures since she was 8 and is now 15. I honestly do not believe that one siezure constitutes you as Epileptic, but I do know that when my daughter gets very anxious it makes everything so much worse. She can always tell when she is going to have a seizure. She can't exactly explain it to us, but her body just tells her. I think what you are having is a panic attack, but your neurologists would know more than I. I think that some form of medication, for the moment for your anxiety would really help. we have found that with our daughter she needs more rest than most teenagers because when she is really tired we tend to see more seizure activity. I know you really want answers and sometimes there are not always a good one, but I think if this was a constant issue you would have experienced more already. Good luck and we will all be praying for you. I think sometimes it helps to know that you are not alone.

neuronutcase

replied on August 9th, 2009

New User

ONE seizure does not an Epiletic make! If so, the world would be full of epileptics. Most everyone, and I mean everyone has at least 1 seizure during their life. Whether it's of an epileptic nature, or nonepileptic event, we all have them sometime during our lifetime. Fortunately, and I really mean fortunately, most only have an episode or two and most go through life never realizng they had 1. They're the lucky ones.

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