This is a long post. I have to tell the entire story for this to make any
sense. In a nutshell my wife had seizures (we're not sure why) and she has
been seizure free for 6 months. She does not want to take medication
(because she has been seizure free this long), however she needs dental work
done and our dentist will not work on her until she takes the medication
that the neurologist prescribed (for liability reasons). The obvious thing
would be to take the medication, but so far both neurologists she's been to
have not been able to diagnose her with anything specifically or explain how
the medication works. She's come to the conclusion that the doctors care
only about their liability and not so much for her wellbeing. They would
rather error on the side of liability whereas she would rather error on the
side of not having to take a medication or become dependant on it if she
really doesn't need it. It's a long story but here goes:

One day in October of 2000 my wife had a strange fainting spell when I got
home from work. After getting up quickly to get the door, she passed out
then had yellowish vision and felt warm and confused for several minutes
afterwards. We attributed this to a fad diet she was following (900 calories
a day). She quit the diet per my request and her doctor's advice. Nothing
else happened until 2004.

In September of 2004 she had gone all day without eating (again, improperly
following a diet, this time Atkins) and when she finally sat down to eat,
her right arm started to twitch, her neck muscle tightened and she had a
sort of paralysis throughout her body. Again, she had the yellowish vision.
This time it was accompanied with a headache towards the front of her head.
She was too frightened to go to our doctor. She wrote it off as a muscle
spasm. Once again, she was getting just 900 calories per day (I counted).
But this time she was also sleep deprived. Our son had been keeping us up at
night with an ear infection all week long. She had no more than 4 to 5 hours
of sleep for the previous two nights. She had also been drinking tons of
diet soda - up to 3  cans per day (we've heard conflicting stories about
what this stuff can do).

Several days later on September 23rd of 2004 she went to the dentist to have
a molar fixed on the bottom jaw, towards the back. The dentist numbed her up
with the usual stuff  (mepivacaine) and then a few moments later she went
into a full-blown seizure and seemed comatose for 3 to 4 minutes, according
to the dentist. This mepivacaine stuff (or the excitement or fear of the
dentist visit) pushed her seizure threshold over the edge. This was the
wake-up call to get to a doctor and to a neurologist.

Here's exactly what the dentist said to me over the phone:
"You need to pick up your wife, she can't drive. She had what looked like a
seizure to me, jerking, eyes rolling, and she looked comatose for a few
minutes. It looks like she needs to see a doctor."

I drove her from the dentist to the ER (except we stopped to get a snack,
thinking that might help). She explained that she was not unconscious. She
could hear and feel everything while this was going on. And like before, her
vision was blurred and yellowish afterwards.

While sitting in the hospital waiting area after 2 hours, she had another
seizure. This was the second full-blown seizure. She lost complete control
of her body, moving in a strange rhythmic, circular motion, neck and upper
back muscles went limp, then stiffened, over and over, sort of like she was
half way passing out. She was crying while this was occurring, fully aware
of what was going on, and again did not loose consciousness. A nurse saw it
and moved her into a room, where they did all the testing (brain scan, blood
work, etc. all inconclusive). At this point she was practically starving
although the nurse was reluctant to give her food because she might have
choked if another seizure had occurred. They wanted to start her on Ativan
but she declined. Instead, I snuck some food from the vending machine. Her
headache went away. After a couple hours of staying in the ER she was
discharged without any prescriptions and instructed to follow up with her GP
and a neurologist. She did not have another seizure for 24 hours.

She saw her GP the very next morning and he made an appointment for a
fasting glucose test, complete metabolic panel, an EEG, and a follow-up with
a neurologist. He also prescribed Phenobarbital and instructed her to use if
only if the seizures returned or could not be controlled by eating and
resting.

That evening she had another seizure. This time the seizure was brought on
by pure anxiety. Again, she did not loose consciousness. This seizure was
the strangest. She was reading on the Internet about Aspartame, and recalled
guzzling down about 4 diet Dr. Peppers each day (as part of her modified
version of the Atkins diet) the prior week. Apparently the web page she was
reading upset her so much that it caused her to go into a seizure. Just
being scared caused the seizure! First her neck started twitching slightly
and a headache came on (I had just walked into the room at this point). I
asked her to stop reading the web page and to relax. But it was too late.
Two minutes later she was on the ground, not twitching per se, but muscles
moving involuntarily and slowly. She was crying the entire time. She could
speak to me but knew exactly what was going on. Her vision was again
yellowish or dark during the episode. I was able to talk her out of this by
calming her down. The seizure actually stopped by calming her down. After
this episode she experienced a headache and a sense of unreality or
confusion for approximately 30 minutes afterwards. She continued to feel
groggy until I fixed her something to eat. Within 15 minutes she was feeling
fine again. From then on she was able to keep the seizures under control
just by making sure she had a full stomach and remained calm. By now we were
really convinced that not eating had something to do with this. All
throughout the day she kept checking her blood sugar with a glucose testing
kit but the glucose numbers were ok.

After nearly a month without a seizure, she wound up in the hospital with
severe hives due to a bad reaction to a sulfa drug (taken for an infection -
unrelated). She was given IV prednisone and benadryl in the hospital. About
20 minutes later she felt very drowsy and her arms started to twitch. 10
minutes later her heart rate increased by 10 BPM every 15 seconds, as I was
watching the monitor. Soon her heart rate was at 160 and she was in a
seizure, eyes rolled back, arms twitched, etc. I yelled for the doctor and
he came in and said it looked like a pseudo seizure because he could hold
her arms down and they would stop twitching. He spent all of 10 seconds
looking at her then left. About 10 seconds later the seizure subsided and
she felt very tired and confused for another 10 minutes. Once again she did
not eat for at least 6 hours prior to having this "seizure". She also did
not have much sleep the night before. How this kept happening, I don't know.
The both of us would loose track of time and forget to eat.

She was released from the hospital the same evening and was fine after that.
We stuck to a strict sleep and eating pattern and the seizures went away
100%. Not one seizures or twitch since then and it has been over six months.

She has been seeing two neurologists who so far have done several different
types of EEGs (sleep deprivation, no food, flickering lights, etc.) and the
EEGs always come back normal. Absolutley nothing abnormal. One neurologist
prescribed something called Lamactal but she did not want to take it, mainly
because she was no longer having seizures and secondly because neither one
of the neurologists could explain to her how the medicine worked! She doesn'
t want to become dependant on that medication for the rest of her life.
While I can sympathize with her, and agree that there's a long list of side
effects with the medication, we sort of have a problem now. She is in need
of dental work and no dentist will work on her until she either takes the
medication, or gets a note from one of the neurologist. And of course there'
s the concern that this whole thing might start over again. She's seen
several dentists (she's practically been shopping for a dentist). One
dentist suggested taking valium just for the visit, but the neurologist said
that wouldn't help. While her teeth are in pain, she refuses to take the
Lamactal because she is not having more seizures and wants to be free of
medication. Of course, if she did have a seizure she could choke while
having the dental work done. So she doesn't know which is worse; not having
the dental work done or taking the medication. We don't know what the
long-term effects of Lamactal are or how safe it is, how long it has been in
use, etc. and since the neurologists can't even explain that to her, well,
we're in bad shape.

My questions to this group:

 1.. What could this be? Psychogenic seizures, or something?
 2.. Should she take the Lamactal? Should I try to convince her to take
that, or should she wait several months then have the dental work done?
 3.. If she took the Lamactal just to get the dental work done, could she
taper off of that after a couple months? She's afraid that if she tapers off
later that it will actually cause seizures that she would otherwise not
have.