question about EEG and MRI

[elicia230]

i have had seizures all my life, i had them as a baby and took seizure medication before they took me off of it as a child. i went back on it about 20 years ago and without a MRI i was diagnosised with Epilepsy, temporal lobe seizures, the doctor thought i had a scar on my left side of my brain based on a EEG report.   20 years later i finally got that MRI and it says: Normal size and shape and are midline. no masses, no white matter or abnormalities, minimal mucosal thickening in the ethmoid and maxillary sinuses, no CVA hemorrhage detected.  doctor said he didn't see a scar.  i went for the EEG.  It said. Significant amount of muscle artifact noted intermittently throughout the study which does affect the bitemporal leads. At times there were sharly controured slowing in the temporal leads bilaterally, more so on the left than on the right, this may be due to muscle artifact, no other lateralizing findings seen.  this may have been influenced by muscle artifact.  i have no clue what all this means now.  where this leaves me.  I KNOW i have seizures, I know how they feel, what i don't know is why or what causes them or if i'm doing the right treatment or if there is a underlying condition i don't know about.   can anyone else make sense of those results? any help is greatly appreciated.  

[elicia230]

I know i had my EEG done on July 2, and i picked the report  up on August 17th after 5 times of calling and asking the doctor's office for the results and getting nothing, so finally i went by and got it and the nurse told me, He said to tell you he's sorry he just read this today,  didn't tell me what he thought of it or anything just SORRY,  didn't give me a clue what it meant! so now i have to find another doctor cause obviously this one doesn't care to read the results if he is going to wait that long.  I really just want to know if there is a underlying cause to my seizures.  maybe a sugar imbalance?  has anyone ever had any experiences with Aspartame in their diets? seems like more of this in my system the more my seizures react.  Course i'm on a low dose of topamax as it is,  i don't want to be overly medicated as i want to have some frame of mind left so i would like to learn to deal with my seizures in the most Natural way possible.  i think cutting out the aspartame has helped but i am curious if anyone else has had a issue with it.  I want to find a doctor however that will check me with more than just a finger stick on the sugar issue.  Just to be certain.  and definitely a doctor that will READ my results.  good doctors are so hard to find.  

[juju447]

Hi Elicica,
I too have hed epilepsy all my life. I am 48 now. When I recently went for a scan the results came back as normal. Sadly I knew this couldn't be right, as my whole life has been screwed by epilepsy. Anyhow, I got another letter, about 2 weeks later to confirm what I suspected in the first place; namely that there was something there afterall.It was roughly a similar reading to your own.
I was really cross to think that that scan must have been read several times before they wrote back to me, and even then they got it wrong, yet they expect me to trust them to do surgery and NOT **** it up!
I think, to a large extent, we have to help ourselves. I have read on the internet that coconut oil in the diet is beneficial in treating epilepsy, as is the spice, Tumeric, when taken per teaspoon in warm milk per day. Also, fish oil tablets and supplements of vitamin E, Calcium and Magnesium.
And if you take Tegretol, ask your G.P. for sodim blood tests, as it is known to leech this from the body, adding to our problems. Tegretol also leeches Calcium, which is why I now have Osteoporosis!
Good luck, anyway, Julie.