Hi. I had 5 fever induced seizures as a baby. As an adult I believe I've had 3 upon waking in the morning. I had the sound of loud silence (almost ocean-like) in my head and my whole body froze up and I couldn't move through the entire event...then, about a minute or two later I started to come out of it.
The last one happened about 3 years ago. Well, I'm wondering if I'm also having them in my sleep. I go through times of insomnia and sleep deprivation, other times I sleep but constantly jerk awake in the night, and other times I sleep like a log. I'd say roughly every 2-3 weeks I go through an EXTREME funk. My whole body is weak and heavy. My eyes are blurry and I have a dizzy feeling in my head. The funk lasts 2-3 days and I'm back to normal. Today and yesterday I'm not in my extreme funk, but my head is dizzy.
Could I be having seizures in my sleep and the cycles of symptoms I have could be happening afterward? Any insight would be appreciated. I see the doctor on Thursday.
Sincerely,
Sonja

It is possible to have seizures only in your sleep. Just make sure you explain everything to your doctor. Have they ran the EEG's, MRI's and CAT scans? They also might be interested in doing a sleep study.

The doctor wants to do MRI and EEG. We'll see. I sure want to get to the bottom of what's wrong with me. My memory has also been horrible for the past year and my little kids even notice I'm spacey! Thank you for your response!

hey sonja stevens

i get seizures mostly while sleeping. Check out the thread "Wokstar" I recommended a good article that you might find helpful. I gave the link in the thread...

good luck! and let us know the results

Thank you very much for the info. I read the article you suggested yesterday...it was very interesting and helpful. If you happen to see this, I have one more question. After you've had a sleep sz that you weren't aware of, you mentioned the side effects that make you suspect you had one. How long do those side effects last? Do they ever last more than a couple of days? Thanks again!

hi again,

the length of my side effects usually depend on the type of seizure i have. When I have a tonic clonic, then usually i feel wiped out for the entire day. And I spend the entire day in bed...sometimes sleeping, but usually with a headache. Sometimes imight get another seizure. I feel dizzy and light headed. This all usually last the day, the next day i feel much better, only usually a little sleepy.

If i have a complex partial (i know sometimes when i wet the bed). I feel sleepy/tired for most of the day, but not nearly as bad as if it had been a tonic clonic. I am able to function well enough to participate in my daily routine/activities. Every now and then during the day I get a dizzy/light-headed spell. (perhaps about 5 of them). These symptoms disappear the next day.

However, i have heard that many people with epilepsy are affected for 2 days or more...I don't think it is unatural for some to experience longer side effects due to seizures. Like some of your symptoms you described of having memory loss, or spacey etc.

keep us updated

and of course if you have any other questions feel free to ask! I enjoy them

A seizure in sleep can affect my son for the whole day. He will have trouble thinking, be tired and irratible, frustrated, it takes him awhile to bounce back. WHen he has a larger seizure we do see that his school work is off for several days.


I hope you can figure out what is going on!

Wow! This is something I have thought about for the last couple of years now. My last Grand Mal was three years ago but there are days that I wake up and those same feelings seem to surface. I dismissed them as; 'not enough sleep' or 'maybe I'm not feeling well'. I can relate to Kyak mom's statement. It takes a good week from a Grand Mal to recoup. You almost feel mentally set back and the whole week your just waiting for your brain to get back up to speed. But those mornings I wake up and feel this way it lasts just the day and things start to come together again.

Unless I had the time to sleep every night strapped to and device that could monitor my brain activity I really will never know if this is whats happening. I curious but not to the extreme that I would regulate my whole life around this. I'm not lazy or it isn't that I don't care. I still cling to the idea that I can still be in control of my life.

Good luck.

Thanks everyone for your responses. I had my EEG yesterday, the results are not in yet, but my doctor phoned me last night. He spoke with a neurologist about me and that doctor strongly suspects I might have narcolepsy with sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations. I will be having a sleep test sometime soon. I'll keep you all posted.

Thanks everyone for your responses. I had my EEG yesterday, the results are not in yet, but my doctor phoned me last night. He spoke with a neurologist about me and that doctor strongly suspects I might have narcolepsy with sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations. I will be having a sleep test sometime soon. I'll keep you all posted.

Hey Sonja,

thanks for the update. wow, sounds very interesting too. It will be nice to get back the EEG results too. I understand about sleep paralysis, as i believe i have experienced it before. I did not find it too fun...haha. was kinda scarey at times. I guess narcolespy could explain your uneven sleeping habits and the hypnogogic hallucinations...what are these like when you experience them? are the describable?

I think i have experienced some before, when i was younger. I wonder if i have a mild case of it too or something...considering my sleeping patterns too. epilespy definitely has so many different aspects to it.

Hi Wokstar!

I just got your message. I am running out the door right now and will be back on Sunday. I'd be happy to explain what happened to me when I get back, okay? Have a great weekend!

Sonja

Hi Wokstar!

I just got your message. I am running out the door right now and will be back on Sunday. I'd be happy to explain what happened to me when I get back, okay? Have a great weekend!

Sonja

Great news.....hope it clears things up. looking forward to reading your post.
hope your weekend is great as well :D

Hi Wokstar!

I'm back and I had a great weekend. Well, I had never heard of sleep paralysis or hypnagogic hallucinations until last week! Previously when I said I believed I've had 3 seizures as an adult, I actually now think 4...well the doctor thinks it was sleep paralysis and when I read about it, it really sounds like that's what it could be. The first time I was a teenager. The other 3 were between 1992 and 4 years ago. Out of the 4 episodes...1 of them was accompanied by the hallucination, which at the time I did not believe was a hallucination!
It was in April of 1992, I was a new Christian at the time. It was a very happy time in my life. I woke up with my husband at 5am, made his lunch and saw him off to work. I was WIDE awake. I was not into drugs/alcohol, so I was completely clear minded and awake. I went back to lay down in my bed, as I layed there I thought I heard someone trying to open my front door and I got scared. All of a sudden...boom....I was caught up in a horrible scene. I felt like my body was up off the bed, my bedroom door was spinning off its hinges and above the door I saw 3 demonic looking dragons with long snouts all moving in a galloping motion. My whole body was frozen, there was a deafening silence in my ears...I couldn't move or scream. I honestly felt like I was being dragged to hell, it was so scary. Then on my right side in the air above me appeared my husband with a wierd smile on his face and reaching out to me (it was wierd...I knew it really wasn't him), I tried to reach out to him and I was able to yell "Jesus, please help me", and when my voice came out it sounded really wierd and then...boom....everything was gone, and I was alone in my room. It was so early in the morning I couldn't go anywhere, but I immediately fled my room into the kitchen, I was crying and praying. I didn't understand why this had just happened to me. I remember asking God to show me what I needed to do or stop doing in order to please him.
Well, I then called Calvary Chapel hotline to pray with someone and made an appointment with a pastor later that morning. I was freaked out and scared. This was a full on spiritual thing that happened to me. But no matter how scarey it was, I learned a lot that day and it ended up being a wonderful day.
I was afraid I was demon possessed but I learned that couldn't be true....a Christian has the light of Jesus inside, darkness cannot dwell in there at the same time, Jesus is greater. (1 John 4:4 - "...greater is He that is in you than he who is in the world.")
I also learned not to fear the enemy and that God has given us weapons to fight against spiritual forces with. I had never read Ephesians chapter 6, it's all about the armor of God and the spiritual warfare we may encounter.
I learned more about God's love that day and also learned not to fear the enemy...he has no power over the Christian. He may be able to bug us, but cannot harm us. (Psalms 121:7 - "The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He shall preserve thy soul.")
Anyways, when my husband came home at the end of the day, I sat him down to share with him all I'd been through. I honestly was just thinking of myself and wanted to share with him. When I got to the part about seeing him above me in the air, he told me he needed to go into the other room. He got on his knees, prayed and asked Jesus to come into his life that day. Wow! The last thing I was expecting! :) I believe satan tried to scare me that day and who knows what his plan was, but as it says in Genesis 50:20, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."
(I'm going to submit this and continue in another post.)

continued...
Hi! It's me again! I hope what I shared didn't scare anyone off! It really happened!
Anyways, after that time I had 2 other experiences with sleep parlysis. Once I was waking up and I could feel it coming on...the loud ocean/silence sound, my body went into the freeze and I was caught up in it again, but this time without any vision/spiritual feeling. The last time it happened, I actually felt like I fought it off. It started to happen upon waking and I fought and fought and pulled out of it sooner.
So now we get to the present time. When my doctor was asking me all the questions and I told him I thought I had seizures in past and told him all my present symptoms, he asked if I'd ever had a visual thing accompany one of the sleep paralysis'. I told him the above story thinking he'd think I was a looney-toon and he believed me. Then after talking to the neurologist the narcolepsy word was first given to me. I've investigated it and was flabbergasted to hear of sleep paralysis accompanied by the vivid hallucinations. At first I was sad. This was a real experience I had and didn't want to discount it. But I'm realizing that even if there's a physical explanation for why it happened, God still used it for good in my life and my husband's life!
I've read a little about narcolepsy and the thoughts that I could have been wide awake, but with narcolepsy you can instantly go into REM sleep mode even feeling awake with eyes open...that would explain the vivid, real things I saw... And the reason we could be paralized is because most people in REM sleep are paralized, otherwise we'd be acting out our dreams or sleep walking. But narcolepsy messes with sleep patterns and you don't cycle through the proper sleep patterns. You can start with REM and even awake during REM, thus the paralysis. I'm just learning, so I could be wrong on some of this still. I'm trying to learn about it. Anyways, I haven't shared this in awhile. Thanks for reading. Have a great day! :wave:

Sonja

Hey Sonja,

thanks for the post....i read it pretty much when you posted it, but didn't have time to respond until now.

wow! what a hallucination u had.. I've had sleep terrors as well, i think they are associated wtih my epilepsy. They sound kinda like sleep paralysis, but i guess that is a kind of seizure as well? I'm not surprised that i get these, because i do only get seizures while sleeping. My sleeping patterns just don't seem to fuction correctly.

My hallucination is usually that i too think there is someone in my room...and i try to get away from them and call out for help. but also, i feel ilke i can't move, but at the same time i'm spinning in the air above my bed. they sound kinda funny. I always called them sleep terrors...no i know....sleep paralysis.

so, do u know what triggers these for you? and are you going to be on medication?

Hi there Wokstar! :wave:

Wow...it does sound like you have sleep paralysis as well. So you have been positively diagnosed with epilepsy, right? And you've experienced the sleep paralysis. And it kinda sounds like a hypnagogic hallucination (hh) accompanied it too. I wonder if that is connected to the epilepsy or is it possible to have another sleep disorder as well as epilepsy? (Not that you need anything added!! :nono: )

As I've been trying to find out more about it, I keep seeing the sleep paralysis with (hh) associated with narcolepsy. If you go into the "Sleep disorder" section of this healthboard and type in "Sleep paralysis" in the search...lots of people with these experiences pop up. When I saw that for the first time a week or two ago I was stunned to hear that it has happened to others besides me! I have not yet been diagnosed, so I'm still in that great unknown state. My doctor strongly suspected narcolepsy....but if you have those symptoms with epilepsy, it seems like he shouldn't be so quick to rule out epilepsy. My 40 minute EEG didn't show anything abnormal, yet I know I'm not normal! :eek: He wants me to do the sleep test next. I'm not on any medication. I'm afraid of it I guess, I'm very sensitive to even cold medication. The doctor wanted to try something but he agreed to wait until we know what's wrong with me for sure before he experiments on me.

About what might trigger my sleep parlysis...well, one time it was fear that I think brought it on and the other times were early morning after I had briefly woken up and then dozed off again or at a nap time coming out of deep sleep while sleeping on my side... If it's narcolepsy, it would have something to do with the REM sleep cycle.

I did go out and buy lots of vitamins. I have a book called, "Prescription for Nutritional Healing" and it lists the things to take for most ailments. Narcolepsy and Epilepsy are in the book as well. I'm going to start on these and then make my appointment with the sleep center. I noticed a couple people responded to a post you posted back in April. That was so interesting to read! Well, have a great night!