My daughter is 8. She has only had 4 episodes of " sleeping seizure" The very first one I took her to her dr. She seems to think that it is nothing to worry about. But the weird thing is, she is asleep when it happens and 90 % of the time comes out of it with light stimulation. She discribes the dreams she has and all include excitement, fear and anxiety. I have read up on it and it says that although it looks like a seizure it is not. Help me!!

"90 % of the time comes out of it with light stimulation."

What do you mean by "light stimulation?"

What makes you think she is having a seizure?

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Mark Yannone
mjyannone@aol.com

well i really don't. but she shakes and drolles and when i call her name it takes her a second but she comes out of it. I read about night terrors and how they can look similar to a seizure, and i can tell you that her dreams are very vivid and even scary to listen to and she remembers everything after. maybe you can help me understand what this is.

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Look after yourself.

Don't worry. People do all kinds of weird things while they sleep! :-) She could probably tell you some interesting things after watching you sleep.

If she remembers everything when she wakes up, she's almost certainly not seizing.


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Mark Yannone
mjyannone@aol.com

i took her to Dr and she seems to think that it is nothing but still wants her to get an eeg. i am so scared. should i be concerned. what do you think could be causing this.

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Look after yourself.

I have a 3 year old that has epilepsy. He woke up last October having his first seizure. I never noticed all the jerking this child does in his sleep. Until he had this spell. Know I have noticed that my 1 year old does just as much weird stuff in his sleep now that I pay more attention. I guess I never let it bother me before until I seen my 3 year old have his first seizure know I constantly find myself watching them. So maybe it's all normal. I think your body goes through all this jerking and gets ready for sleep. But both of my sons do the weird stuff too your not alone.

Ok just for the record my 6 year old son has this very same problem it started when he was 2.5years old. In that time he did have some 25 seizures while sleeping.
His EEG is abnormal and he was to a large extent drug resistant to tegratol, epilium and lamictal. In April 2003 he did have 3 seperate seizures each while sleeping. At the early stages of his attack I opened his mouth and found his tounge back in his mouth blocking his airway, I put my finger in to his mouth and removed his tounge and he gasphed for air. We went back to the specialists and was referred to an ear nose specialist, he did an xray and found my son had enlarged adeniods, they were removed and his epileptic condition has improved considerably with only one attack in 20 months.

Its my opinion that there is a direct linkage between epilepsy and sleep apena, where the sleep apena restricts air to the brain which subsequently leads to a seizure.
Any person suffering from siezures in their sleep should be checked for sleep apena to determine is this is where the problem is manifest.
regards pha10100

Interesting point PHA1010.....One thing I might mention is that you are lucky he did not bite you while you did that!! OR he might have severely bitten his tongue. A better way to keep the tongue from blocking the airway is to turn the person on their side. The tongue will react to gravity.....


My son has mostly nocturnal seizures, started before age 5, diagnosed at 7, he is now 13 . He was checked last year for apnea after a misdiagnosis. No apnea. We head for another soon. He also has a periodic limb movement disorder as well as epilepsy.

First let me say that I do not want to scare you more than you already are. I am a 41 year old male who has been having sleeping seizures since I was 11. It took 3 years and more tests than I can count to get my seizures under control. I have had many EEG's (sleeping and awake) and MRI's but the doctor's have never discovered anything abnormal. I finally found a doctor that ws willing to put me on Dilantin based on the description of my seizures by my parents and myself.

My seizures began as 'Dizzy spells" where I felt disoreinted and light headed. They rarely occured while I was awake. Over several years my seizures progressed into severe grand mal seizures. I have been lucky in that since my teen years my seizures have been occuring only while sleeping. Since my seizures were controlled, this allowed me to function normally on a daily basis.

The best advice I can give you is to find a good Neurologist and if your child is diagnosed with a seizure disorder be patient with the medication. There are many different medications and it may take time to find the one that works best for your child. Good luck and god bless!

Thanks for sharing your story with me! It happens so often that the tests just do not show what is going on. We do have a neuro now who is willing to treat the PLMD with seizure meds even if she will not rediagnose seizures.

Thanks for the encouragement. I will read it to my son. He is almost 14 now. Trying to let him be as normal a teen as we can. His first neuro robbed him of a normal young childhood and I do not plan on doing that again!

My daughter has had two seizures and they were all during her sleep. The first one was Thanksgiving last year and she actually stopped breathing. At that time they concluded that she vomited in her sleep which made her choke, stop breathing, and then seize. Then she seized again today during her sleep. So at this point who knows why she's having seizures. We have to go next week for an EEG. She couldn't be woken up out of it. The first one her eyes were rolling in the back of her head. This time her eyes were straight ahead and she was gasping for breath. Each time her whole body shook. Afterwards when talking with her she recalls the 2nd seizure but says she was dreaming. She's only 4 so I guess that's the way it seems to her. It's possible that all your daughter is having is night terrors, especially if you say you can wake her up. Not that it's any better than seizures cause night terrors are pretty scary. My brother used to have them but we knew he was dreaming. It was pretty alarming to hear him though and he was very difficult to wake up. He'd cry, whine, scream sometimes, and toss and turn a lot. Hope you get some answers. :angel:

I am 30 and had seizures in my sleep for 10 years and had no idea! My memory was horrible and I would wake up with drool all over my pillow or I would have bite marks on my lip or the inside of my cheek and had no clue that I was having seizures. Even people who slept next to me didn't notice. After many years of waking up feeling tired and out of it, I finally had a seizure while awake in front of my roommate and she called 911.

I had many tests done and was diagnosed with complex partial seizures in my temporal lobe.

How is your child's memory? My seizures are now under control but for many years life was confusing. I was able to get through college and grad school but it was soooo difficult for me. Most mornings I would wake up and would have to look up the directions on how to get to my school because I had no clue as to what was going on around me. I studied like crazy but things that would take the average person 5 minutes to read, comprehend and remember would take me 45 minutes. I spent the night at the hospital and had tests done while I was sleeping and they finally caught the details of what was going on in my brain during a seizure. This could be the key to truly finding out if an actual seizure is occuring.
Good luck~ :angel:

Oh gosh I hope you are still out there, My son is doing the same thing and I am also very scared. My son stops breathing and his eyes are open and looking to the right corner. No one knows what it is. PLEASE answer if you know.

I have seizures when I'm awake, and when I'm asleep.... I live alone, and there have been a few people who have seen the awake seizures-including co-workers, boss, MD, home health nurse (complex partials with some generalization)....my first feeling after the aura is to get away from people, so in some ways, the seizures at night (know because of waking up with inside of mouth and side of tongue chewed up, and muscles sore, and sometimes wet bed) are less scary, because nobody sees me like that...it's over before I wake up, although i feel somewhat worn out, and my mouth and tongue hurt...but there isn't the almost panic to get away from people....

Oh gosh I am going through the same thing with my son, does she stop breathing? My son will start by breathing heavily and then he will stop and it seems like all the air is being released from his body and then he wont breath for a few seconds, (seems longer) maybe a minute. Then he starts breathing. His body gets stiff and really hard to move during all this, they have told us to put him on the floor and straighten his neck for the air passage to open. Also his eyes are open and he does not respond to us. This usually last a few minutes, by the time the ambulance arrives it is all over. The thing about this is he remembers what is going on, He dreams of colorful stars turning around him in a tornado motion and he cant get out and he is really scared. Also that there is flour or white powder falling on his face and he cant breath. He does not have the spasm affect of a seizure. I am alslo very scared. This started for my son when he was 7-8 years old. He is now 10. They have done all sorts of test and come out with nothing. They too tell me that they are not seizures.
I wish you and your family the best of luck with this. Please keep in contact as to what it seems to be I will do the same. We just had a neuro appt. yesterdya and tomorrow we go see his other Dr.

My 10 year old has been having noctural seizures since she was 7. Luckily she was already under the care of 2 very good doctors for her ADHD. She was diagnosed with "beneign rolandic epilepsy" which they tell me she should grow out of if we can keep them from happening. She currently is taking Lamictal to control them.

Hopefully your child's doctor will order a 24hr EEG. The hour long EEG only showed abnormalities, but the 24hr really told them what was hapening during sleep.

I can't tell you that this has been easy, there is no simple fix. My daughter has been thru 3 diferent meds and 3 trips to the emergency room. She has slept with me for months till we were sure about the medication. My daughter stops breathing for 3-4 minutes during a seizure and it scares us to death!
I tried a neurologist after one of our emergency room visits(they referred me)that idiot told me I was an overprotective parent and all people stop breathing during seizures. He was obviously NOT a parent!

The one thing I have learned is that every doctor you go to will probally have something different to say. Stick with the one that you believe in your heart
has your child's best interest in mind.

If this is related to sleep apnea or night terrors, she's not epileptic; she can have hypoxic seizures during sleep apnea (not based on electrical impulses going haywire based on brain abnormality). Or night terrors, since she does remember everything. But even folks with simple partial seizures remember what they've had, and knew it was a seizure.

I have comlplex partial seizures- day and night. The only way I know I've had night seizures (since i live alone) is i wake up with a chewed up tongue, aches, a headache, and feel like I've been hit by a bus. I'm pretty well worn out for the day. Other types of seizures can happen at night- sometimes only at night.

A seizure caused by something other than faulty electrical impulses, and from a specific cause are not generally epilepsy- and many can be treated. Epilepsy is defined as repeated seizures due to electrical changes in the brain- not electrolyte imbalances, fevers, alcohol intoxication, drug abuse, sleep apnea, etc.... while epileptics can have those problems as well, and increase their seizures, the epilepsy is from the brain. NOT from some identifiable cause from somewhere else in the body.....

hi
I go for a 24 hr eeg in jan. what if it does not "show" anything I mean the least gmals I have had over 10yrs in 2 a mo. but what if I am having a good mo?.
As for the being scared I feel for you I have seen the panic and fear in many people now after watching me in a gmal screaming, and, and , and, I turn totally blue from lack of oxygen wow. If it were my d.d I just don,t know?
I do know sleeping in a controlled "safe" place is best pillows etc.
take care. Rick