I'm back, two moves and years later. Sorry I don't remember my old screen name (or email or password), but I've missed you guys! I learned SO much here, so thank you!

I have a question about nocturnal seizures. My first diagnosed seizure episode (as opposed to my first episode....grrrrrr) was nocturnal status epilepticus that woke dh up. 8 ys ago, I was told I had seizures and kind of made the leap to epilepsy because, well, it's clear they were seizures and what else is there? I had a few more in my sleep, but then, with med help, all that I had for years were breakthroughs where I woke up having partials. Since the pattern was the same (same time of month, same time of night), I assumed they were due to epilepsy/seizures, too. But they were autonomic in nature-heart racing, head pressure, nausea, heat flash, then body shaking for a few minutes.

Now I am having them more often and around the time I'm falling asleep (sometimes in the middle of the night). I wake up not breathing, then start breathing, with my heart racing and I feel short of breath. Sometimes I'll feel shaky and hyper-startleable (noise or movement around me makes my heart race). I eventually can fall asleep if I'm sitting almost upright. They're different from my old partials in that I'm more aware of NOT breathing, and they don't continue on to the whole autonomic set of symptoms.

A new doc (a cardiologist familiar with dysautonomia) said that my daytime seizures and episodes match dysautonomia, a new diagnostic path I've been tracing lately. Matches up with a lot of my MS-like symptoms, too (which go back 8 ys with NO diagnostic support for an MS diagnosis, so docs ended up *ignoring* them since they couldn't label them), but when I asked him about the nighttime symptoms, he just mumbled something about anxiety setting them off. I'm like-"DOC, I'm asleep!" So there's some physiological thing setting them off (like I mentioned i the psychogenic thread).

Anyway, wondering if anyone here's experienced "seizures" like this.....?