What Causes Violent Shaking Followed By Difficulty Breathing And Disorientation?

Posted on Thu, 13 Aug 2015

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Wed, 12 Aug 2015 Answered on

Tue, 1 Sep 2015 Last reviewed on

Question : Violent shaking (seizure) followed by difficulty breathing and then falling into a deep sleep and waking up 20 minutes later confused and disorientated. This is the fourth time it has happened, yes it looks like a seizure when it is happening, there is no incontinence but there is some rolling of eyeballs and tongue frothing, don't think there's any tongue biting. Another one happened one week ago and the first one happened about 6 weeks/2 months ago and I think it could be happening whilst asleep also. The first time it happened an ambulance was called, a MRI scan was taken and nothing showed up on it.

Answered by Dr. Ashok Kumar Choudhary (-5 hours later)

Brief Answer:
there is need for anti epileptic medications

Detailed Answer:
Hello,
Thanks for using healthcaremagic.

From the available description it appears that all four episodes were epileptic in nature and warrants for anti epileptic mefication like levetiracetam, sodium valproate or phenytion and lot more.

It is not essential to have tongue bite or incontinence to call it seizure.

Presence of post episode confusion snd frothing highly suggestive of epileptic disorder despite the normal MRI.

Please talk to your doctor to consider for anti epileptic treatment as soon as possible. Occurrence of more episodes will harm the long term as well as shory term recovery.

I hope this answers your question.
if you have more questions feel free to write back to me.
Thanks and regards.
Dr Ashok Kumar

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Neel Kudchadkar