Temporal and occipital lobe epilepsy and breakthrough seizures.

Hey all.

(At this point in time, we had no idea where my seizures were occuring, and what was causing them.)

So, my last "big" seizure (as in full-blown tonic clonic) was in June of last year, after being seizure-free for a little over six months. However, after that I had "brain blips" that I thought were mild panic attacks. I'd feel dizzy, then it was like my brain just kinda took a minute, then everything was back to normal. I never lost consciousness or anything, I knew what was going on, but I couldn't really process it.

When I was at my parent's house, however, I was upstairs and hadn't taken my meds yet (I'm on Lamictal, btw) and suddenly had this feeling. So I ripped down the stairs, grabbed my pills, and went to take them. My mom asked me what was wrong and I thought I said "nothing, I'm fine", but I stammered and stuttered and it never came out right. Apparently it was gibberish.

They knew about my seizures, though, so they put me on the floor and cleared everything around me. They had to help me down. I sat there for a few minutes, then was fine.

I went to my neurologist about two months later and he informed me those were breakthrough seizures, so we were going to up my meds.

Then I was scheduled for a video telemetry test (a long-term eeg), and so I got hooked up to the machine (I felt bad for the tech, as I have a lot of hair, they had to come fix it a lot XD) and stopped taking my meds.

Two days after that, I had a full-blown tonic-clonic seizure. I was looking at the ceiling, trying to determine if the weird feeling I had was, indeed, a seizure, when I saw little fireworks. (It was quite pretty, to be honest) Then I tried to alert the nurses and it came out as gibberish again (I thought I was at least saying 'um, i, um, but apparently not). Then I seized and came to a bit later.

 I scared one of the new nurses, she'd never seen a seizure before. XD

Ah. Does anyone else stop breathing when they seize? The nurses had to put a thing down my throat and use the inflator thing so I was still getting oxygen.

Anyway. After that, and three long years of no-friggin-idea, we now know where my seizures are: in the temporal lobe and occipital lobe. I did some quick research and it seems that occipital seizures are 5-10% of the seizure population. So that explained the feeling, the speech problems, and the lights.

However, we still have absolutely no idea what is causing them. It seems every time I have a seizure they're under different conditions.

I went in for two normal eegs and one sleep-deprived, and nothing happened.

Anyone else have these kind of problems? Or the same seizure location? I'm curious as to what auras people have regarding occipital/temporal seizures.

Thanks!

-Azari