Epilepsy

[brittanylovesalan]

My boyfriend Alan is 24. He takes pills called 250mg divalproex (generic for depakote) twice a day to prevent epileptic seizures from occurring. He works at a Tyson company factory hanging chickens during the day. Usually from 2-11 pm. When he comes home he eats and then we play video games a lot. Usually for about 2-3 hours. Sometimes on the weekends we play for 7-8 hours. We do take breaks every now and then. One night after we had played video games for a good amount of time, Alan went to shower and then came to bed. He was lying down and had a seizure. Then another one. He had a total of maybe 5 seizures and they were about 15 seconds long and a couple of minutes apart. Afterwards he was fine. He told me that he usually has a headache before a seizure and that he didn't this time. He also told me that he had taken an alka seltzer close to when he had taken his medication. He says that the aspirin in the alka seltzer caused him to have the seizure because it doesn't go well with his medication. I'm just wondering if the video games are causing him to have seizures, or if it was the alka seltzer that caused it?

[butterfly84777]

Well I myself take depakote as well for seizures as a kid, I know that asprin cannot be taken with depakote, not sure if it causes the seizures tho or if it just has an interaction!! And as far as video games it says all over the games and systems that epileptics should use caution because it can cause seizures. Especially with the prolonged time that you spent playing!!!
Does he have regular seizures in general? Has he been an epileptic long?? Epilepsy can also change as a person grows out of childhood!!

[choo_choo]

I don't play video games, but I know when I have the 2-hour EEGs and they do the strobe lights I often have seizures.  When I used to use CRT monitors I had to be careful about the refresh rate.  When I was in college I had to have the University library change the refresh rates of all their monitors because I couldn't look at any of them for more than a few minutes before having a seizure. It is very plausible that he could have seizures from playing video games for that amount of time if he is photo sensitive.