Beth's Mom

Amanda,
You can find info on types of seizures by just hitting Seizures under Search on your top tool bar...there are many good sites.
I can tell you what our daughter's are like.
Beth will hold her wrist the day before seizures. The morning of seizures she is grouchy and uncooperative. She is normally sweet and only a 3.5 mentality, so unable to tell us how she feels.
Just before a seizure she often, but not always, seems to sense they are coming and will walk up to us and stand close to us without saying a word. At other times she may fall down if standing.
When the seizure begins Beth's eyes roll to her upper left, her arms become rigid and raise up in front of her body and she urinates from losing body control. Her teeth are clenched, her face and hands turn blue from lack of oxygen. We can hear a seizure from another room if not right with her as she makes noise gasping for air and writhing around. All of this lasts for only about 1 1/2 min. and then she will sleep for about an hour. We normally prop a pillow behind her back and have her laying down on her side so that the saliva filling her mouth will run out of her mouth.
I often cradle Beth in my arms and talk to her telling her to rest in hopes that she might be able to hear my soothing words. She will usually have a series of about three of them and then not have them for another week.
Most of her seizures occurr late at night or early in the morning while in bed...the best place in the world for her to have them. We do alot of laundry for the bedwetting and her clothing.
Most of Beth's seizures have happened at home. Once she had one mid=afternoon in the freezer section of a grocery, once midday at a McDonald's, once on a school bus for Multi-handicapped in the morning, and several times at the sheltered workshop and in her school setting when she was younger in special ed in public schools.
We have learned to watch for signs of seizures and how often they happen.
Beth is not allowed to have diet pop but otherwise her food intake is only limited by what she will eat, which is little (she craves mostly salty things like potatoes). She did not start her monthly until about the age of 16 when we changed her from Depakote to Felbatol...we have noticed that the estrogen levels do increase the chances of having seizures so we monitor when her monthly comes to anticipate that she will have some, usually on the last day of her periods.
Hope something I have told you will help.
Beth's Mom