Seizures?

I received a phone call from my dad's neurologist's office saying that my dad might be having seizures.

I had called yesterday to report an increase in my dad's tremors. The neurologist, my mom, and I had talked about this last Wednesday when we had the neurologist appointment, and the neurologist increased the intensity of my dad's deep brain stimulator.

I had really just started noticing this change last Tuesday, when we moved him to hospice. Every once in a while (maybe every 10 to 40 minutes), my dad would get a whole-body tremor . . . well, in his arms and legs. He usually had been resting or sleeping, but his eyes would fly open and he would look sort of scared or surprised or stricken for a little while (less than a minute) and then his body would relax again. My mom said he did that very regularly -- every ten minutes or so -- that first Tuesday night. I had thought it might be related to adjusting to the new catheter, especially because he had complained of pain in that region. That was a week ago. When we had the neurologist appointment last Wednesday, he said my dad could be having seizures, but it would be pretty difficult to tell. They seemed to die down a little bit after that, so I thought the deep brain stimulator had fixed it.

However, yesterday the episodes seemed to pick up again. Tonight I visited my dad around dinnertime, and in the hour that I was there, my dad had three or four of those episodes. I had called last night to describe what I was seeing, despite the adjustment to the deep brain stimulator, and this morning I had a message saying that this sounded like seizure activity. It's still kind of hard to tell because he has Parkinson's, but these episodes are pretty different from what I've seen before with his tremor.

I don't think my dad ate or drank too much today, either.