Seizures, Age of Onset, and Sex

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No, I meant "sex" as in male or female.

I'm just curious. It is said that approximately 30% of autistics will have at least two seizures within their lifetimes (which qualifies for epilepsy). The majority of autistics will begin their seizures in the teenage years or early adulthood (although there definitely are auties who begin in childhood too).

I'm wanting to sort of take a brief survey here of those with seizures, when they started, and what sex you are. (I'm also curious to see if there's a difference between age of onset in males and females.)

I'll start the thread off with myself:

I have epilepsy (temporal lobe), began my seizures approximately 2 years ago at age 24, and I am female.

You?

I'm really sorry that you have to go through that.

My daughter started her seizures at puberty. It seems to be hormone related. I keep a diary of when they occur. The doctors are intending to stop her hormones and see if she gets less seizures.

We have a seizure-alert dog, in training. I think the dog is figuring out how to alert but my daughter doesn't have seizures often enough to reinforce the training a lot.

Female. Complex-partial and possible absence seizures. I remember some things in early childhood that seem seizure-like, but it was only diagnosed in adolescence and it's unclear if I had any before then. Also have atonic and myoclonic seizures sometimes but only on meds that lower the seizure threshold.

I haven't been diagnosed and in fact have never even mentioned my seizures to a doctor, but I've certainly had a few. The first was some time in high school, when I would have been 17 or 18 (probably the former). I think it was a simple partial seizure. I had been feeling dizzy and nauseated for a while and started heading upstairs for a drink. Half way up the steps, I suddenly became extremely dizzy and disoriented, my vision blurred, and my left side became heavy, so I fell against the wall, but not down the stairs, thankfully. Later seizures have been far less eventful, usually involving something that feels like a buzz or vibration at the base of my skull followed by dizziness and sometimes blurred vision. I also usually have a feeling of derealization or something similar.

I've always been able to feel my seizures coming on. Sometimes I'd feel the buzz at the base of my skull before the seizure started, or I'd feel something else like a tension before that. Sometimes I've been able to bend my neck and lessen the effects.

I never again had one like the first one, and subsequent seizures became increasingly less frequent and less pronounced, eventually disappearing altogether. I don't seem to have had one for at least a year, unless I just haven't noticed it.

Oh, and male (see avatar).

Don't know much about seizures, in diagnostic terms, but I've had muscle tics as long as I can remember, not constant, but occasional. My whole arm or leg will jump. Also, I blank out sometimes. Eyes open, unresponsive, barely aware of my surroundings. This, too, is as long as I can remember.
male.

Sophist:
Pick up an index of the New England Journal of Medicine (I don't think the index is online, but it's at most big libraries). I remember reading some very good stastical stuff on that, and it wasn't just all numbers. The names of the authors escape me, but it was about 2 years ago.

btdt

Sophist - you basically read my mind... I was going to start a survey on this topic because I was wondering if there was any correlation between HFA/AS and seizures. I know that there is between autism (what I'm assuming is full-blown autism) and seizures, but I've never read anything or heard anything about AS.

My first seizure was at 6 months of age. I had some again around age 5, and then 14. According to my neurologist (one of the best neurologists in the country for epilepsy/turrets) I no longer have epilepsy. This is based on the time period i was on medicine and did not have any seizures. There is less than a .33333 etc chance that I'll ever have another seizure again

Mine were in the right front temporal lobe and usually manifested themselves as my going about and attacking people. The times they could understand what I was saying during the attack, I was accusing them of doing something to me. For example when I was 5, I was accusing my sister of stealing my sock. A sock that I was in the process of trying to put on over my shoe in between punching her. When I was 14, I seriously believed the doctors in the hospital were using a gigantic drill to drill inside of me and laughing at the pain they were causing. In fact, if not for the fact that I know A) hospitals don't have gigantic two handle drills and B) someone drilling me with something that large would do quite a bit of serious damage I would fully believe that the doctors had actually done that to me. It was that real. Its only the sheer impossibility of it happening that enables me to accept that it didnt

its interesting though that during the ones I had when I was 14, I had two in school and one in the hospital. I didn't attack the school nurse or the paramedics, but I attacked everyone in the hospital. Of course I did stop breathing and was unconcious for one of the ones in school so that might be the reason why I wasn't trying to beat the nurse up.

Sex: Female

Age at onset of seizures: 24 years old (temporal lobe epilepsy). Fortunately, my seizures are under good control with medication.

Sex: Male

Age of Onset: 22

My seizures lasted from August 2002 to January 2005. I haven't had a single one since then and went off of my medication 6 months ago.

I'm not sure if i've had seizures or not... I had two episodes where there was a buzzing and i couldn't move, each lasted only a few seconds. The doctor said they couldn't be seizures because i didn't loose consciousness (um.... i thought there was a kind where you didn't lose consciousness but what ever, I'm just a laymen ) But if they were seizures, they were when i was 22 and I am a female.