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How to diagnose or rule out Epilepsy?

Thu, 01/22/2015 - 08:28

Hello!

I am new here and looking for some help from members. This will be a bit long, but I hope you people can help me out! Many thanks in advance!

I am a 23 year old guy from Hyderabad, India, who had an episode of seizure in Feb. 2009. I have no recollection of the episode itself. At that time I was studying away from my hometown, in another city. My friends described it something like this. 

I was chatting with friends and they say, I suddenly fainted, hit my head while falling and then had a seizure. I was taken to the Emergency Room, All I can remember from this incident is the doctor asking me some questions in the Emergency Room. I mumbled to him that I had a minor head injury as a kid and passed out again. I woke up in an ICU the next day. I can remember that, on the previous day, I was fasting for a religious festival, and did not eat properly on the day of the seizure too. 

From the next day onwards though, everything seemed normal, they put me under observation for a day in the ICU and then shifted me to a room and discharged me on the third day. The doctor at that time, a neurologist, told me that everything was okay, and I had nothing to worry. He mentioned that the attack was probably due to weakness or something like that. They did a CT scan of my brain which was normal. I was given Oxcarbazepine and I was to take it for two months. I finished the dose and never went back for a review. 

In 2013, a company refused to give me health insurance on the grounds that I had epilepsy and they did not cover pre-existing conditions. (I had given them my medical history).I was confused and also a bit worried and began to research on the topic. I read the doctor's writing on the discharge notes (which were strangely handwritten). There was a single line which could be interpretted as "Presented with Seizure Disorder" or "Diagnosed with Seizure Disorder". This was written under the heading "Diagnosis". 

I went to another neuro doctor who told me that since that was the only episode of seizure, I need not worry since I did not show any symptoms before or after that episode. I got insured by another company though. I even saw another neurologist who asked me to get an EEG and an MRI done. The EEG was normal and I somehow could not get my MRI done.

Afterwards in 2014, I was diagnosed with Adult ADHD and am on medication for the same. Till now, I never had any other seizure. 

On 12th Jan, I fell from my two wheeler, and injured my knee. I tore my ACL completely and had a partial LCL tear. There was a fracture of the tibial spine also. I needed to undergo arthroscopy and the anesthesiologist asked me for my history, I mentioned the seizure episode and she consulted another neurologist who ended up giving me Levetiracetam (Keppra) as a preventive before the surgery and a day after that, and tick-marked epilepsy in a sheet where they recorded my medical history. 

This ended up confusing me completely and the Insurance company thought I was hiding my epilepsy from them.

I finally could contact the doctor who treated me in 2009 and he too ended up saying that one episode of a seizure is not epilepsy and he did not diagnose me with epilepsy.  

I want to properly address this issue and either rule out or confirm that I have epilepsy. What should I ask the doctor? What kind of tests do I need to get done?

I am already struggling to cope up with my daily life due to ADHD and now this ACL tear means it will take atleast 2-3 months for me to get back to normal work. This question of whether I have a seizure disorder or not, is bugging me. 

I hope the members in this forum can give me suggestions and help me ask my doctor the right kind of questions and get the right kind of tests done to help me arrive at a proper diagnosis.

Many thanks for showing patience to read the entire post!!

Sriram.

Comments

here in th states it takes 2

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2015-01-23 - 09:48
here in th states it takes 2 seizures to diagnosis epilepsy. There are other things that can cause a person to have a seizure. I have a dear friend that has a seizure now and then and those seizures are due to a medication he takes for his heart.

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