My wife Renee 56 is in late stage Alzheimer's. On the 7th. of this month she had two seizures within hours of each other. The seizures were terrible, but they seem to have re-booted her mind. She is now able to do things she could only do years ago: talk, walk with ease, swallow and chew etc etc. Has anybody had a similar experience? Any information would be gratefully received. Best wishes to all caregivers. Torps
My husband had one seizure 14 months before he died. The emergency room checked him out, but could find no reason for it. He had no history whatsoever of any kind of seizure disorder--this thing came out of nowhere. It did not change his Alzheimers status one bit. (Gave me some gray hairs, though…lol)
My brother-in-law (who does not have dementia) had a seizure. He is in his 60s. Although he had many diagnostic tests, no cause was identified. The doctors said that is true for most people who have no history of seizures. They just come out of nowhere.
I have never heard of someone with Alzheimer's regaining abilities they lost, whether from a seizure or anything else. That is remarkable.
Torps, my wife also had a seizure which was identified by an MRI I think but which neither of us noticed. Our specialist put her on 81mg Aspirin for a number of years.
Many here can identifying with their spouse seeming to regain some functions/abilities for a while. Whether the seizure did it for your while or it just coincided with the seizure you will never know. Enjoy the regained abilities for however long they last.
This is very interesting and rather unusual. Is her neurologist tracking this? I would think that he would be quite interested in such an uncommon, and rather astonishing, outcome given the history.
I have tried to get information - on similar instances as my wife experienced - from Mayo Clinic (USA) and Alzheimer's Organisation (UK) without success. Here in South Africa - from my support group - I have only found a layman record of one similar instance as I have experienced with my wife. From books and literature I have from the Mayo Clinic, I can find no information. Many thanks to everyone for their replies. Torps
Interesting that you mention this now, Torps, as we had the same experience with my husband (66) two weeks ago. He has late stage Alzheimer's, and after two seizures one morning (probably caused by a change in medication), he on the third day suddenly started to talk more intelligibly than he had done in a long time. He smiled, answered questions, tried to tell us things. In his case his walking was negatively affected. It has improved considerably, but he is not where he was before the seizures yet. He also had clearly had visual hallucinations.
I found some with a similar experience here on the boards: http://thealzheimerspouse.com/vanillaforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=4059
More information here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-mishaps/201207/seizures-and-postictal-psychosis-in-alzheimer-s-disease-brief-glimpse-the
My DH had two seizures last Jan. For a few weeks he was able to communicate better (he is aphasic and can almost never initiate conversation or draw up words).