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Personal info Child

name: Teagan
sex: Female
date of birth: 4/20/92

Epilepsy info

primary diagnosis: Complex Partial Seizures
additional:
cause: Unknown
date diagnosed: 1/94
type(s) of seizures: Teagan has complex partial seizures which last from
30 seconds to 2 minutes. She turns her head up and
to the left, rolls her eyes back, has a lot of chewing
and salivation, and may vocalize.
frequency of seizures: Teagan has flurries or clusters of seizures, always
occuring during an illness. She can go for months
without a seizure, then have a hundred during a week
while ill.
additional health issues: Teagan has asthma and allergies.

Medications used (in chronological order)

Carbamazepine (Tegretol)
- still being used: No
- effectiveness: Unknown
- positive effect: None
- side effects: Encephalopathy
- comments: This was Teagan's first AED. We suspect it caused
  encephalopathy which took several weeks to recover
  from. Teagan lost her cognitive skills and had to
  relearn a tremendous amount when she was 20 months
  old.
Ethosuximide (Zarontin)
- still being used: No
- effectiveness: Unknown
- positive effect: None
- side effects:
- comments: We used this for only about a week until an EEG
  suggested another medication might be more useful.
Phenobarbital
- still being used: No
- effectiveness: Unknown
- positive effect: None we could tell
- side effects: Hyperactivity
- comments: This was used for a few weeks during Teagan's second
  seizure cluster at age 20 months.
Lamotrigine (Lamictal)
- still being used: Yes
- effectiveness: Unknown
- max. dosage: 87.5 mg/day
- positive effect: May have shortened Teagan's seizures
- side effects: None observed
- comments: Teagan was put on lamictal when an EEG showed a
  focal origin in her right temperal lobe. Her seizures
  seemed to become shorter after she started the lamictal,
  dropping to 15 to 45 seconds.
Phenytoin (Dilantin)
- still being used: No
- effectiveness: Unknown
- max. dosage: 150 mg/day
- positive effect: Reduced seizures
- side effects: Hyperactivity, poor coordination, mental dullness
- comments: IV dilantin has been used on Teagan twice to break
  up seizure clusters. We continued the dilantin for
  a short time while we were ramping her up on lamictal
  when she was 3.
Gabapentin (Neurontin)
- still being used: Yes
- effectiveness: Unknown
- max. dosage: 600 mg/day
- positive effect: Difficult to judge since we have been using it only a short time
- side effects: Emotional controlcreased violence, oppositional behavior, poor
- comments: Neurontin does not seen to be working out for us.
  The side effects may cause us to stop using it.

Alternative treatments

IVIG
- effectiveness: Unknown
- positive effect: Unknown
- side effects: Possibly induced a seizure flurry
- comments: We used immunoglobulin infusion therapy for
  9 months. There is a history of immune problems
  on the maternal side, and the neurologist had
  reason to think it might help based on success
  with it on a distant relative of Teagan's he had
  treated. After the third infusion, Teagan began
  a flurry of seizures within one day of discharge,
  so we discontinued the treatments.
Dextromethorphan
- effectiveness: Unknown
- positive effect: Unknown
- side effects: None observed
- comments: Dextromethorphan is a common cough suppresant
  available over-the-counter in the U.S. in
  combination with various cold medications. We
  use the losenge form (Hold). Our neurologist
  tells us it is an NMDA-receptor antagonist which
  can reduce seizures and protect the brain. We
  doubt its effectiveness, but we continue to use
  in (1.25 mg q.i.d.) at the neurologist's advice.

Personal Notes

Teagan had her first seizures in conjunction with a rotoviral
infection at age 12 months. Her seizures came with the
initial symptoms of the illnes and went away a week later
as she recovered.

Teagan's next seizures came at age 20 months. She had
110 seizures over a two week period. During that time,
she had a throat infection and a sinus infection. She
was put on Tegretol, but that was a disaster. She lost
her vocabulary (of 100 or so words), became hyperactive,
lost many of her motor skills and most of her congnitive
skills. We took her off tegretol, tried ethosuximide,
then phenobarbitol, but nothing seems to help that much.
Her seizures just went away as mysteriously as they came.

We used IVIG therapy each 3 months until one infusion
appeared to induce a seizure cluster. We used ativan
to break up her seizures this time. Teagan's EEGs
show generalized seizures which the neurologist thought
might be benign, and given our bad experience with
tegretol, we left her unmedicated for another year. We
used ativen PRN to break up her clusters when they occured.

At age 3 1/2, Teagan had another seizure flurry. This
time an EEG showed a clear focal origin in her right
temperol lobe. We used IV dilantin when the ativan failed
to give us control. We continued to use oral dilantin
while we brought Teagan slowly up to a therapeutic level
of lamictal. Then we tapered her off dilantin. We are
still trying to find an adequate amount of lamictal to
control Teagan's seizures. This past fall, at age 4 1/2,
Teagan had another cluster of seizures which required
IV dinaltin after ativan again failed to control the
seizures. After this experience, the neurologist added
neorontin to Teagan's medication. Since Teagan can go
so long without any seizures, we don't know if her
new medication regimen is helping.

Teagan tends to have her seizures in the fall and winter
during cold and flu season, but only when she is sick. Most
often, she has a lot of allergy symptoms with her seizures,
especially rubbing her nose and eyes. We feel there is
a connection between her allergies and her seizures, but
she is capable of having seizures during any type of illnes,
not just allergy-related ones.

Contact info

For additional information, please send e-mail to Richard (hitt@mathstat.usouthal.edu)