I have a 14yr old daughter who until 3wks ago was perfectly healthy. She was diagnosed with atypical complex migrains. It was so bad it caused muscle weakness in her legs and she was having to use a walker. A week after being told she had migrains she had her first seizure. Her peditrician witnessed it and called it a partial (only her eyes and left arm were jerking). She had EEG and blood work done and nothing showed seizure. Also when she was diagnosed with the migrain she had mri and spinal tap. She is having seizures every other day and has stopped breathing and wet herself during one of them. The doctors are calling them psuedo seizures and said it is from stress or depression. They have put her on Zoloft. Until we can see another neurologist next week. I am not happy with this diagnosis. My question is, can you still be having epileptic seizures and all of the tests show nothing?
The following user gives a hug of support to cinlou2994: Positive Cynic (12-09-2011)
Hi,
It is possible for seizure activity to not show an an EEG even it the seizures are actually epileptic. Sometimes they come from somewhere too deep in the brain to register on the EEG. I had a 4-day EEG done in the hospital a few years ago, and I pressed the button whenever I was feeling a seizure. Sometimes they tech would sound confused and be like, "Are you still feeling it now?" and I'd say, "Yes" (I have simple partial seizures, so I'm still conscious during them), and the tech would be like, "okay..." And then anyway, the last day, my doctor came in to tell me the findings, and she said that they only caught a few of the seizures on the EEG, so I asked her why and she said that sometimes they're too deep in the brain. But they were able to tell that they came from my frontal lobe and were able to prescribe me a third med and now my seizures are controlled a lot better.
So it's possible that your daughter's seizures are too deep in the brain and she may need an EEG that lasts longer than a half hour for them to be able to catch one. As I said for me, I was on an EEG 24 hours a day for 4 days, and they only caught a fraction of the ones I was feeling.
It's good that she is seeing a neurologist next week. Maybe ask if she could have an extended EEG. Or sometimes I've heard of neurologists suspecting pseudoseizures but they put the person on an anti-seizure med to see if it helps. If it does, there's a good chance that they're actual seizures.
Good luck. Keep us updated.
I have grand mal seizures and other than when the seizure is occurring my brain activity is normal. Also, unless there is an underlying disease causing the seizures there is nothing a blood test is going to tell you. So the answer to your question is yes, you can be completely healthy with all negative tests and still have seizures.
