Seizure when standing up.

Brain and nerves
1

Approximately 4 years ago I went through a period of time where I got extremely light headed when standing and had blacked out vision and body tingling/numbness. These episodes caused me to have two seizures which I went to my GP about but they didn’t seem too concerned about it which surprised me.

Since then I have had occasional episodes of blacking out vision and tingling when standing but never full blown seizures. The majority of the time this is never an issue.

Last week I began having increasingly worse episodes, along with pretty bad exhaustion as well, I started taking my blood pressure during and after these episodes. It remained between 109-131 systolic and 71-100 diastolic with an average HR of 80. The readings were normal while sitting and rose slightly higher a period of time after these episodes. I managed to take 3 readings during the episodes 66/48 and 52/37 average HR: 150, the blood pressure readings obviously shocked me. During the third reading I actually had another full blown seizure, fell to my knees, limbs shaking and lost consciousness for about 3 seconds, during this time the BP monitor kept going up to 220+ and very slowly went down, then about two minutes after the seizure it gave me a reading of 82/53.

I am a registered paediatric nurse so I am aware of both orthostatic hypotension and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, I believe it more likely to be the former. My question is: is it worth going to the doctors about this? I know there isn’t much to be done and the GP wasn’t too concerned the last time.

I’m just concerned because it’s been approximately an hour since the seizure and I just feel exhausted with a strange tingling in my head and limbs, mostly arms and almost light headed along with a feeling of being “out of it” and a general sort of off feeling so to speak. However the episodes stopped happening the last time they occurred and I have been under a lot of stress this week, extremely sleep deprived (staying up for 36hrs on two occasions then only getting 2-4hrs sleep to compensate.) and haven’t been eating or hydrating very well. I have been recuperating today, I’m off work and have been eating/drinking and taking vitamins. Is there anything else I can do to prevent this happening again? I’m quite anxious about it happening at work or in public.

Thank you for taking the time to read through my post and I appreciate any advice you may have to offer.

2

Dear Lexipedia,

You are having a rough time of it. Sounds serious to me. I had three seizures at work on night shift. My head nurse told me that I was a risk factor. I have been on Long Term Disability for almost a year now. Joke is I am going into retirement this coming January. The unite I was working on installed very bright fluesent lighting plus a new fire alarm system with flashing red lights, a night mare for me. I started siezures right after having a heart scan, with raidoactive dye. My daughter called a ambulance. Five years now, I am still having them. Their triggers are flashing lights, fluesent lighting, lighting strikes, fast editing on TV, bright sun light, sun light glare off cars etc…such is my life, I get on with it. I have had MRI, CT and EEGs. I had told my neuroglist that my eyes are open when I see flashing lights not closed during a EEG. She had a lost of words. My vatals are everywhere when I am having a seizure, sky rocking with a heart rate over 200+ sometimes. Adivan calms them back down to within normal, 2mg. Exhaustion, yes a tingling in the head and else wheres, speach problems ( Tazan talk) etc…I usually have an aura before hand, like a lighting strike that fills my head or plusing green color that fells my vision. I have been on meds but they do have their side effects, nasty. Not getting enough sleep has a big time effect on these and too much emotional stress. In your line of work its on going, I know this.
Hope I helped.