← Return to Advice? Still having seizures and MRI is normal.

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Profile picture for Chris Gautier, Volunteer Mentor @santosha

@maureendigi, Good Morning
As Jake has well said, a person can have epilepsy and completely normal exams. I have had epilepsy since I am a teenager, but just got the diagnosis when I was 48 years old (I am now 52 years old). My seizures until 2017 were rare (3 per year ) and very mild. I was just absent for 10 seconds, coming back as if nothing had happened. All exams I did as a teenager and adult until 2018 were normal, EEG and MRI. At the end of 2017 I had a burnout and my epilepsy advanced. It was just after correct orientations for an EEG (one night with no sleep or very little sleep) in 2019 that epilepsy showed its face on the exam. The standard MRI was also normal until 2018, but in 2019 I did a specific MRI and a small lesion on my hippocampus was there (I have temporal lobe epilepsy). But as one of the doctors told me when I asked why my epilepsy had not been pointed out before, the best diagnosis is done through an interview with a doctor and his evaluation.
I also do believe that an evaluation at an Epilepsy Unit Care is a good idea.
All my best!
Chris (Santosha)

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Replies to "@maureendigi, Good Morning As Jake has well said, a person can have epilepsy and completely normal..."

he is going in november to have a PET scan with contrast maybe that would show something. was the MRI that you had specific?

@santosha I have TLE also since I was a teenager. I started having seizures after I was 15 after a golf club to the head but never told my parents. It wasn't until my early 20's that I told my mother and was brought to a Dr. When I was first diagnosed the MRI's showed abnormalities in the left temporal lobe. MRI's since have not changed even though new seizure activity occurred. I have had numerous EEG's 24 hr and in hospital. Most of the time there was little to no activity but at one in hospital EEG I was having a day where myoclonic jerks were numerous that showed seizure activity. Recently I started having small, short seizures where I just feel out of it for a few seconds. We are now tweaking medications again. I hate this part of it. So many side effect until you find something that works.