Hello my name is Jules2 and I am also new to this site. My wife of 14 years has just been diagnosed with left temporal focal seizures, in March 2008.

BTW we are both nurses, she is a Pedi ICU nurse and I am a Neuro nurse. A few months before she was diagnosed I noticed that she would suddenly make certain statements when trying to speak to me. For example, if she was trying to point to my shoes, she would say "those are your people" or she uses the word "person" a lot. At first we would laugh about it and dismiss it. I started noticing that she was doing it more frequently, so being the neuro nurse that I am, I began to get very worried. To make a long story short she had an MRI, EEG, Lumbar Puncture performed and nothing was detected except for the fact that she was having a lot of seizure activity in her left temporal area.

Her neurologist started her on Lamictal and currently she is on 200mg twice a day. The problem is that she has the episodes about every 2 weeks. And to top it off we just found out we are pregnant (6 weeks)......breathe.

This morning she woke up and immediately started to experience the focal seizures, mind you it is only speech. She has never had a grand mal seizure (thank God). We both became worried and I called our Neurologist (good friend of ours) and she asked that I give her the Klonopin we keep handy for these situations. The Klonopin makes her very sleepy but it seems to control it. She said it is probably the hormones from the pregnancy ( i hope that is what it is).

I hate this and it makes me sad, scared and frustrated because the medication obviously is not controlling it. My wife is "Chatty Kathy" and the nucleus of our family. We have an 8 year old daughter. I miss her keeping us all in line and running this household. I miss my wife and I want her back.

I dont know what to do and hope that someone her can shed some light on our situation. I have dealt with epileptic patients for over 17 years as a neuro nurse and I DO NOT want my wife living with this problem and much less having grand mal seizures.

Please shed some light on this sitaution to help me cope better to be there for my wife. I can't even imagine how scared she must feel.

Thank you,
Jules2