TLDR: 10 year stroke survivor with epilepsy is having strange symptoms. Have others experienced similar things?
My person (36M) had an ischemic stroke almost 10 years ago. He made it out in pretty amazing shape, has somewhat limited feeling/numbness on the right side of his body but overall he’s living a pretty normal life. About a year post-stroke, he was experiencing these feelings of “something is really wrong,” and after some research and speaking with his neuro, we learned that he was having simple-partial seizures from epilepsy that developed due to the stroke. That has all been managed with medication since then. He has never had any type of seizure other than the simple partials, so the symptoms were mostly aura, emotion, and changes in sensation on his stroke side.
He goes through periods of time where he has “weird” feelings on his right side, sensory changes, numbness where there isn’t usually numbness, less sensation than normal, etc but it usually only lasts a couple days. Those periods are usually when he’s extra stressed or if he had way too much to drink the night before. The first time was after he played a hand held video game, which he has not done since.
He’s now in a period of about 2 weeks where these feelings haven’t gone away, and woke up this morning feeling like everything is worse. He couldn’t feel his hand on his phone, his foot on the floor, or his face when he was talking. We did the FAST test and everything is normal, and after drinking water and some walking around, he has regained some sensation but not close to his “norm.”
We are wondering about Non Epileptic Seizures, stroke progression, anxiety causing sensation changes…or what?
Things that could be factors:
screens (he works in front of a computer all day, watches a lot of TV, is on his phone a lot)
caffeine (2 cups a day, sometimes a soda)
alcohol (he drinks a few times a week, the night before this current phase started he definitely had too much and woke up feeling really weird the next morning. He has not been drinking this week, he was hoping that would help, but it hasn’t.)
dehydration (none of us drink enough water…)
food (he does not eat very well)
stress (he does not manage stress very well, is understandably scared by these feelings, he is uncomfortable talking about this stuff or taking action)
pinched nerve (he’s had a pinch in his neck on the opposite side for a few days, could that be somehow affecting his stroke side sensation?)
anxiety (from what I’ve read about NES, it’s like a panic attack where your brain thinks it is having a seizure without any measurable activity. The first time this happened with the vudeo game, he did an EEG that registered nothing even when he felt multiple changes during the test.
It doesn’t feel like it’s an emergency room situation, he’ll call the neuro first thing Monday, so I’m just wondering if other folks have had similar experiences?
