post ictal sleep

My daughter is 10 and has temporal lobe epilepsy.  She contiues to have simple partial seizures on depakote and lamictal and is scheduled for additional testing in the near future.

My question:  is it unusual to have a post-ictal sleep even after simple partial, which of course involve no loss of consciousness?  Lately, she always falls asleep after complaining of stomach ache, which we know is part of her aura, and weakness.  Sometimes she can sleep as long as 1-2 hours.

Thank you.

[CCF Neuro[P] MD, RPS]

Dear Barb:

Sorry to hear about your daughter.  Yes, post-ictal sleep can happen with any seizure event.  How often is she having seizures?  How many medications has she been on?  I don't expect an answer, but I would raise these questions to you to ask your pediatric epileptologist.  It might be a suggestion that medication alone will not control your daughter's epilepsy and other thinking and steps might be considered, such as surgery or VNS.  Just a suggestion.

Sincerely,

CCF Neuro MD

[Barb]

Thank you for your reply, Dr.  Yes, we are getting things in place for evaluating her for surgery.  She has only been on the 2 meds but her dr. feels that, although willing to try yet another med, it probably will not help much since she is having these almost daily or every other day.  THe frequency has continued to increase monthly even on depakote and lamictal.  SHe has some degree of abnormality on MRI and on EEG.
We are hopeful that we will receive permission from the insurance company to have her evaluated at CCF in the near future, but are beginning prelinary steps locally.
This need to sleep is a new thing and indicates to me that even though the seizures are not "big" ones, they are having more of an effect on her brain.  But, I was unsure how much weight to give this new thing.

[barbara to pain and lortab]

When I have my partial seizures and post ictal delirium, I prefer to sleep and become really depressed. The sleep helps a great deal to restore the bodies energy after using all that energy during the stiffening, shaking muscles.