Migraine

My dr. has decided I should have one of these. And the hospital scheduled it but didn't give me any other instructions other than telling me it will take an hour.

I know it has something to do with brain waves but that's all I've got. I thought some of you might have had one and could tell me what to expect. It really made me feel better going into the MRI knowing what it would be like.

I have had an EKG, is it like that?

An EEG measures brain wave activity. With me, they put a plastic cap on me, kind of like an old-fashioned swimming cap, the kind that fastened under the chin with a strap. It had color-coded holes in it. The technician attached contacts through the holes. These sort of screwed in against my scalp and were a bit uncomfortable, perhaps slightly painful. There were 20 or 30 contacts.

Then the tech attached wires to the contacts. These were attached to the EEG machine and were color coded. I lay back on a padded table and the lights were dimmed. This was before digital machines, and there was a whirring as the paper moved along. There were several pens that drew waves on the paper. Think of a seismograph, recording an earthquake. I'm not sure whether you'll see the monitor that the tech sees.

The tech switches the various contacts on and off at the machine to track different brain waves. During this, I just lay there and tried to relax. I succeeded pretty well.

Toward the end, she told me to close my eyes, and she flashed a strobe. It started out slow and went through several changes of speed. It didn't trigger a migraine attack for me, but it might in someone sensitive to flashing lights. But it didn't last long, only 2 or 3 minutes.

It may have taken longer than an hour, counting attaching the probes and taking them off. Of course, my hair was mussed, but I was otherwise unharmed. This was at the Mayo Clinic in 1992 or 1993, and nothing ran on time there, so I may have waited a good bit after my appointment time.

Other than having to lie still for an hour or so, there's nothing to an EEG. I wouldn't worry about it.

Gretchen in Mississippi

Gretchen covered it really well -- i just thought i'd add my 2 cents -- things that were different for me

i had mine in 2005 (in utah), and i had the same plastic cap, but they also squirted a lot of gel onto my head, so not only was my hair messed up, it was all goopy, too.

i also was told to sleep 4 or 5 hours max the night before...so of course i went into it w/a migraine. the flashing lights made things a great deal worse.

hope this helps
good luck!
emily

Thanks guys.

That is good to know about the gel. I will have to make sure to pack stuff to wash my hair before I go back to work.

Luckily they didn't tell me not to sleep, big nasty migraine that would cause. And I would be so useless at work.
Course at the rate I'm going I'll probably have a migraine anyway, but no need to cause one on purpose.

At least the sensors will just be on my head. When I had the EKG I thought that my husband was going to injure the technician guy..

Thanks Gretchen.

I had one of these after I fell. It wasn't bad at all. Of course that was 12 years ago.

I've had quite a few EEGs this past year. They don't always use a cap. For me, they measured different points on the scalp. Then, they pasted a bunch of leads (30 to 40??) on my head. This process took about an hour. The type of glue depends how well they can get those things to stick to your head. (some types of glue really smell!!) Then they let you lie down for 45 min to 2 hrs. Near the end, they do the flashing light thing (which was mentioned already) & the hyperventilating thing. When the technician heard I have asthma & hemiplegic migraines (triggered by asthma), she didn't want to risk an attack, so I didn't do the hyperventilating thing.

It's relatively painless, unless you are having scalp sensitivity or having a telemetry (mobile EEG)- which can be very uncomfortable & painful.

Bring a scarf or hat -you can try scrubbing the stuff out of your hair, but sometimes the stuff can be stubborn. Complicated hair styles can be a problem. Don't use conditioner before if you have straight hair or fine hair.

Results can take a week to a month or so (?) to get back. I had a telemetry back December & my doctor still hasn't gotten back to me.

Hi all. Just got back from my EEG experience.

Thanks for the note about the hair gel! Because of you guys I was able to pack some baby shampoo and get it all out before I went to work. I got the skull cap that they injected gel into. Not painful but certainly messy.

I was not particullarly fond of the strobe light but I've had worse tests.

The worst part was the hyperventalating stuff. I only lasted about a minute of that nonsense before I had an asthma attack. And then I spent the rest of the test having to focus on forcing my lungs to breathe out so I could breathe in. Totally ruined the part where I should have had a nice nap. I don't know what my suffocating has to do with my brain waves but next time I am totally refusing to do that part. My asthma is still mad.

Double

Aww, Laurelin, sorry that the hyperventilating thing triggered an asthma attack. Hope you're feeling better now.

I'm sorry the EEG caused an asthma attack! I'm glad you're all done with it now

Thanks guys. My lungs are much better now.

When the tech person was explaining how the test would go, she said something about hyperventaling for 3 minutes. And I say, "Should I get my inhaler?" And she says "Does breathing fast usually give you an asthma attack?"
And I say "I don't know. I don't usually generally try it on purpose. I did almost pass out in a CPR training class though."
And so she decides that we'll try it anyway and I can just stop if I get to feeling bad.
But at any rate I should know better because once you've triggered the attack it's like a run away train. It doesn't just stop because you've stopped doing whatever triggered it in the first place
I'm actually quite sure I ruined the last 10 minutes of the test because I couldn't stay still, the only thing I could think about was trying to breathe. I shouldn't have asked about the inhaler, I should have just gotten it. But she seemed so unconcerned about it. You'd think she'd had people with asthma before.

Yes, results can be very confusing. For several different EEGs, I had 3 different neurologists look at the results (for different tests) and tell me that I had a partial seizure focus in the temporal, parietal & frontal lobes... something about sharps, spikes and slowing whatever that means. One neurologist diagnosed me with "migraine-seizure disorder", another neurologist wasn't sure if I had migraines or seizures and my migraine specialist said he thought I had something more than migraines & probably partial seizures and felt uncomfortable recommending holistic options (which was why I was seeing him) and my GP said that my symptoms sound like partial seizures and complicated migraines. I couldn't get my old EEG copies, so i had it repeated last year as well as a telemetry.

My seizure specialist said my EEG was abnormal, but no seizures were caught. She saide my symptoms don't sound like seizures, but had no idea what they were (paresthesias, dysthesias, muscle cramps, episodes where one side of my body would stiffen up & curl up & muscles would cramp & can't breathe(and wake up w/ muscle soreness, esp. in hand & foot),plus confusion, plus tilting episodes, weird sudden headaches (not migraines), hemiplegic migraines & basilar migraines, plus sleep disorder symptoms, plus worsening of memory).

End result: Inconclusive. No diagnosis. No treatment. So basically, I'm sleeping/dreaming the days away and have given up trying to find answers. It's not like I'm better off when I started this whole process anyway.

BTW,

My asthma attacks can trigger hemiplegic migraines & parasthesias.

My guess is the lack of oxygen affects the brain & brain waves. For example, many people w/seizure disorders have sleep apnea as well as stop breathing during a seizure (I think).

When i did the hyperventilation thing in the past, the EEG said I had "slowing" in the frontal lobes.

I think I read somewhere that people who have emotionally/ psychogenically related seizures, tend to hyperventilate.

I was just reading about this over the weekend in Headache in Primary Care by Drs Silberstein, Lipton, Goadsby & Smith. It's not the most up-to-date since it was published in 1999, but something interesting I read - about 12 to 15% of healthy adults with no history of head injury, seizures, headaches or other neurological diseases have non-specific EEG abnormalities. So it would make sense that different doctors reading the EEGs would read different results.

Laurelin,

Hopefully, the end of the test will be just fine.

Did they tell you when to expect the results?