Epilepsy Epilepsy Basics

Portrait of a Child with Epilepsy

Summary & Participants

Life with epilepsy is hard for anyone but for kids it can be particularly tough. Learn about a new treatment approach that may help minimize some unwanted side effects.

Medically Reviewed On: June 12, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANDI ORANSKY: I do things just like any ordinary person. I do things just like any other teenage girl would enjoy.

ANNOUNCER: For Andi Oransky that means life is filled with friends, school, and family.

ANDI ORANSKY: My parents have been more protective in some ways, but they're just parents.

ANNOUNCER: While Andi Oransky has the hopes and dreams of any 17-year-old, there is something that makes her different.

ANDI ORANSKY: I've had epilepsy all my life.

ANNOUNCER: Epilepsy, a condition that causes seizures, is the most common neurologic problem affecting children.

MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: I think there is still significant social stigma, unfortunately, attached with the diagnosis of epilepsy. And it's important to reassure families that their children are normal in all respects; that there's good treatment available.

ANDI ORANSKY: It didn't upset me at all. I didn't have any feelings towards it.

ANNOUNCER: But Andi's mother has different memories.

FERN ORANSKY: Andi was first diagnosed with epilepsy at three weeks old. She had a shaking of her arm, just like this and it turned out be focal seizures in her left arm. I was really upset.

ANNOUNCER: Epilepsy's impact on a family has much to do with the nature of the seizures, which may vary in frequency and severity.

TREVOR RESNICK, MD: Children who have more frequent seizures, it begins to affect them socially because the kids begin to see them as different.

ANNOUNCER: Epilepsy can be experienced in many different ways.

MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: Generalized seizure comes in several types. The most common is a seizure that involves stiffening, which is called a tonic seizure, or jerking which a clonic seizure. And when both of these happen in the same seizure, it would be called a tonic-clonic seizure.

ANNOUNCER: Andi experienced her epilepsy as partial complex seizures.

MICHAEL DUCHOWNY, MD: Epilepsy is also divided; at least focal epilepsy is divided as to whether or not awareness is retained or lost during a seizure. For example, the arm can jerk and the child is completely aware of it. Other seizures are accompanied by a compromise of awareness and consciousness when the child is simply unaware of what he or she is doing and has no memory for the seizure whatsoever when its over.

ANNOUNCER: This may partly explain why Andi remembers so little of her early epilepsy.

FERN ORANSKY: It was pretty bad, it was very bad, actually. But she doesn't remember very much about it, which I guess is good, in a way.

ANNOUNCER: Yet Andi was seizure-free without medication from age two to age six. It was in that sixth year that epilepsy reappeared.

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