Should I wake my partner when I see a nocturnal seizure beginning?

thanks joe - i will look into what you say but really it's just the question of waking him during a seizure that i'm trying to get to the bottom of - but your specialist sounds great so maybe we should look around em x

Hi Nerak95, Many individuals experience epileptic seizures (about 10%) that can be inhibited before the seizure spreads beyond such where inhibition possibilities lose effectiveness for them. The majority of examples are with absence seizures, but that is not exclusive: "Parents, relatives, and patients have frequently reported that epileptic seizures, mainly absence seizures, can be inhibited by a sudden simple stimulus such as clapping, shouting, or gentle shaking of the shoulder. Although reported in the literature and well known to epileptologis, this phenomenon has seldom been investigated." "Sensory Stimulation for Inhibition of Epileptic Seizures" by Peter Rajna and Cristina Lona (Epilepsia, 30(2):168-174, 1989). I used to be able to briefly stop my periodic clusters of seizures at the aura stage by staying awake (with failure at final onset sleep), but that ability stopped, and I haven't discovered any sensory stimulation as a replacement, as I previously posted at epilepsy-dot-com: As I used to get plenty of warning of more intense seizures coming on the next day, with warnings the night before my cluster seizure day, I've tried all kind of tricks to stop the impending seizures. Since my cluster seizures previously hit about once a month, I even tried to find a way to induce them on the best day possible just to get them over with for that month. I never did find any technique that worked beyond simple seizures in limited environments; otherwise seemingly successes were no better than chance random occurrences. I did find ways to induce minor visceral sensations that were weak sensations similar to the very intense visceral sensations of moderate aura. Then, disagreeable such sensations were much more easily induced than agreeable such sensations (i.e., it's easier to induce "sensations of great fear" than sensations of "heavenly ecstasy," but both can be accomplished with long enough and careful schedules of reinforcement). My very limited seizure control success might just be from co-morbid Asperger's, rather than pseudo-Asperger's from imitative side-effects of temporal lobe epilepsy and/or Geschwind Syndrome. Recently, (but I already lost track of it) I read a sloppy research paper that I regard as overly "free will" biased, that claims that focal seizures (such as warning aura) that spread through paths close to "volitional" parts of the human brain, can be stopped in it's path by "willingly overloading" that "volitional" part of the brain with intense activity. It seems a bit optimistic to me, then what do they really mean? With the warning aura, yell loud obscenities at the moon? Hit my thumb with a hammer for the distractionary pain? Stick my nose in a skunk for the distractionary smell? Think real hard about a very difficult crossword puzzle clue? Take a strong swig of caffeine or a stiff drink, or just strongly think about it? The closest I've came, is to take a strong dose of Keppra with a warning aura, but I don't think that's what they meant. They also cited a few too many cases of success (with no failures), but the different powers of thought being able to stop the aura spreading to a bigger seizure just didn't work for me, even with many experiments with and without additional physical actions. From a previous posting, a more scientific article cited was in: I also tried variations with sensory stimulation to stop secondary tonic-clonics from strong periodic clusters of seizures. Some reports of success from others with stimulation involve very counter-intuitive results, esp. a 1989 article in Epilepsia, 30(2):168-174 "Sensory Stimulation for Inhibition of Epileptic Seizures": http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1157.1989.tb05450.x/abstract The posting, with other similar subject postings, was here at: http://www.epilepsy.com/discussion/983031 This path only works when you're not signed on here, otherwise it defaults to the home page of epilepsy.com frequently. http://www.epilepsy.com/discussion/985312 Tadzio PS.: Many more relevant references at end of an article in Hungarian at (Epilepsia article currently blocked 10/27/2013): http://vitalitas.hu/olvasosarok/online/rehabilitacio/2000/1/5.htm & "Sleep and Epilepsy: Strange Bedfellows No More" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608109/ Try smelly shoes????: http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/791 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18353533 (Maybe Ovid's success with tarantula dung is true)