Absence seizures

Post Reply New Topic

Has anyone with Asperger's been diagnosed with absence seizures? For the past five years, I have been having experiencing something odd--occasionally, when I am sitting still and staring at something (e.g. a book, a picture, a poster), I lose awareness for a second. I know what it's like to lose my train of thought or to embark on a mental tangent, but this isn't the same thing. I almost feel as if a lightbulb has flickered, and I only realize what is going on after it occurs (I think my eyes may jolt, but I don't know have enough awareness to say). From the research I've done on absence seizures, it sounds like they last for a few seconds, but I feel as if the phenomena I am encountering takes place in less than a second. Could I be describing absence seizures, or something different? I just received an EEG and was told I have "abnormal activity" in my right hemisphere, but it was insufficient to be clinically significant.

It is also worth nothing that about ten years ago (before I began noticing these blank-out spells), I had an incident where I was sitting in class, and all of a sudden sound was sucked from the room, and everything was covered in a green haze. I felt weak and intensely clammy during this occurrence, and was able to register that it was out-of-the-ordinary, but my normal thought processes were not intact. My cognition slowed, and I wasn't fully conscious of what had happened until after the fact. I'd venture to guess that this episode lasted for potentially 2-5 minutes. Over the course of my life, I have fainted many times, but this felt different to me--more terrifying, plus, it had no trigger (when I faint, it is usually precipitated by dehydration, illness, or feeling grossed out).

Aspies with epilepsy, is this similar to your experiences? Should I be concerned?

I'm aware of other more hellish types of seizures when I have them and usually have auras but I'm not really aware of absences. My absences last about 10 seconds, I think, and I usually stare into space and my eyelids flutter like a cartoon female. Other people think that's cute but I certainly don't. I do know I tend to get a lot of absences in between clusters of other seizures (like last weekend which was terrible and it possibly showed in some of my posts. Haha). I also notice visual disturbances before a lot of seizures and some visual stimulus can trigger them.

Do you drive? If not then it may not be a big deal at this stage but if you do then follow up with your doctor just to be sure.

I have the blank spells. I went to an expert on epilepsie and they did a stress test and it showed that my brain was actually shutting down and going from wide awake to deepest sleep and then fully awake again. He said I was not having a seisure. He did not have a clue why my brain was doing that.

When I went for my AS testing, I told that expert about the other test and those times when I shut down. He told me my brain was litterally doing a reboot of sorts. He siad ithe AS brain could become overloaded and do the same thing a windows computer does with the blue screen.

I could be what is known as the 'aspie stare'? I presume you know what that is? If not, do a search of Wong Planet posts; plenty information available there.