My son has epilepsy. "Epilepsy" just means recurrent seizures. It doesn't bother me that my son has epilepsy. It just bothers me when he's having a seizure. Does that make sense? Many successful people have / had epilepsy. Mr. Kay prefers to say Tom has seizures. Some doctors will say "seizure disorder," but it all boils down to epilepsy.

Anyway, Tom does not have absence seizures (yay!). I did look up in my book ("Seizures and Epilepsy in Childhood" by Freeman, Vining and Pillas... "the book" for the Child Neurology seizure crowd), and valium is used for absense seizures, along with ethosuximide (Zarontin in the US), Valproic acid (Depakene, Depakote in the US, epilim in the UK), and Benzodiazepines (Diazepam/Valium, lorazepam/Ativan, clonazepam/Klonopin, clorazepate/Tranxene). Of these, I only have personal experience with Depakene (Valproic acid) for Tom's partial seizures.... weight gain (which was good for him), poor bladder control at higher doses (and I've read other adults complaining about nighttime accidents while on Depakote), hairloss (another big side effect), and that's all I can think of for now. At the time, I thought it was a good drug for him. I don't miss it, though.

Unfortunately, doctors have to "play around with meds" because different people react differently to them.

Tom's big seizure trigger is dairy. Should you decide to give up dairy, you need to give it six weeks to get it out of your system. Be warned that Tom had withdrawal seizures two weeks into our dairy-free experiment. They weren't as strong, but he had them. We went eight weeks dairy-free, and then let him have some. He did not have a seizure, but he was soooo hyper and it took three days for him to calm back down. It is my theory, that he needs a steady "milk buzz" to get the daily seizures going again. But, I'm not going to prove that. I'm happier with his drug-free progress and alertness.

Our neuro recommended vitamin B6 and magnesium as being "calming" to the brain. So, in addition to the multi-vitamin Tom takes, he takes additional B6 / Mg. And, all of these drugs deplete something or other, so if you aren't on a good multi-vitamin, *please* start.

A seizure log is also a good idea. Feel free to write down anything that pops in your head, as it may help determine your seizure triggers.. time of day, how long it lasted, what you were doing (some people react to flicker of lights... TV, fluorescent bulbs, computer screen, sunshine through the trees as you ride by in the car), weather (sudden thunderstorm), what you last ate or anything you ate recently that you haven't had in a long time. With absence seizures, you'll probably just have to guess if / when you had one. Anytime you notice sudden loss of time, write it down.

Now that I reread this, I realize we've also used Diazepam/Valium with Tom. He is currently med-free, but this is one of my "he's acting kind of seizurish, I'd really like to give him something to make it stop / or keep it from getting worse" emergency drugs. He's had it three times over the past year and a half? All three times he was in a vomiting, chewing, sleeping cycle that didn't seem right. He threw up the Diazepam 10 minutes later, and then slept for a few hours and was fine after that - vomiting cycle broken.

That's all I can think of for now. (((Hugs))) Seizures suck.