absence seizures

[Katnkittens]

Does anyone have any experience of them? My 5 year old daughter is otherwise 'normal' (hate that word sorry) and has been referred to a paed due to suspected absence epilepsy. She's easily distraced anyway but she has these episodes a few times a day where she hums under her breath or spins round in circles.. her eyes also go a bit glazed and half closed. There is absolutely no way of getting her out of them although they only tend to last between 10 and 20 secs.

Bless her, sometimes it happens when shes holding something and she drops it, or in the middle of a conversation. When I ask her what happened she looks confused and doesn't really answer. Generally she says she was just thinking.

I dont know anyone with experience of this so it would be nice to hear from someone in the know.
My paed appt is in 2 weeks.

Hi Kat, my ds has absent seizures too. He will go very still, his eyes will glaze over and he wont move for about ten seconds, he will then do an enormous blink and then smile at me! I never know when he will have them, sometimes he doesnt have one for months and months and then can have two in a week. I tried medication for him but it made his behaviour deterioate greatly so it was stopped.
Hope this is helpful.

My dd1 has epilepsy, which usually takes the form of absence seizures with her. She is very still and rigid when hers occur though. She goes very red and blotchy, and gets hot.

An EEG can be done to check if there is epileptic activity in the brain - but the test is not always totally accurate as it will only tell if there is epileptic activity at the time of testing - ie if the seizures don't take place at the time of assessment the test will be negative. It took 3 EEGs (from memory - I think it was 3!!) to get the formal diagnosis for dd1.

Good luck with the appointment you have booked. Feel free to ask me any questions you think I might be able to help with.

Thanks for your replies. I'm sorry to hear your little ones have this problem too.

Sometimes she goes very still but more recently like I said she hums under her breath, quite often she'll try to take a step but fall over. It's so strange. Some days (rarely) she doesn't have any but I usually see her have at least one a day. They tend to come in clusters so she might have a few in an hour then none for the rest of the day.

I noticed her going rigid only once. She was holding my hand and we were walking to school when she suddenly stopped, eyes went half closed, started humming and her hand went really tight around mine. It's pretty scary and more than anything I feel so sorry for her as her teacher says she has them a lot at school and struggles to concentrate.

She is otherwise pretty well behaved (for a 5 yo lol).

Most people don't understand and think she's just daydreaming. Thats what it looks like but it happens in the middle of conversations and I can pick her up/shout in her ear and she is totally unresponsive.

My GP was a bit rubbish and didn't even offer an opinion, I dont think she had a clue. She just said I needed to take her to a paed. I'm a biomedical scientist and I knew more than her!