5 yr old daughter with comple-partial

Katelyn is my 5yr old daughter and has recently been diagnosed with somplex partial seizures.  She only has an episode when she is falling asleep and asleep.  The seizures last 5-8 seconds.  She may sit up, clench and interlock her hands together, blink repeatedly, and tense up.  She may have 3 or 4 clusters together than falls back asleep.  during her sleep she may have 20 to 25 of these.  She has been started on depakote sprinkles for four days now and has seen very little improvement.

has anyone else experienced similar episodes as these?

What are your experiences with Depakote?  Does it take 1-2 weeks to see an effect?

Thank you to everyone and god bless.

A broken-hearted Dad

Hi, I read your post & thought I'd reply I also have a 5 year old daughter with epilepsy. she has generalized seizures. She also is on Depakote 1500mgs a day she was having 100s of seizures daily & it did'nt seem to be helping then all of a sudden it kicked in she is now down to an average of 2 a month (PRAISE GOD!!!) it took us about 6 months to get her meds where they needed to be. but, I dont know about your daughter but mine well lets just say she cant stand to be around her self! She is so hyper on it. But I would much rather see her climbing the walls then laying on the floor! Anyways hang in there & if you need to chat with someone who can understand drop me a line I'd love to chat with you! Hang in there & Put in the GREAT Physicians(GOD) hands!Jolene

Thanks for the replies.  Im glad to hear your daughter is under control.  Its been a crazy ride for us.  Katelyn was on Depakote, became toxic, still was not able to control her seizures.  Our neurologist added Keppra and still unable to control.  We took her to see Dr Orrin Devinsky from NYU.  She was started on trileptal and that worked like magic but then she developed a bad rash and had to be taken off of it.  We admitted her back to the hospital where they tried tegretol which worked but she was allergic to it again.  Our doc tried Lyrica and she was doing well.  We were discharged from the hospital and the combination of lyrica, keppra and depakote seemed to be working.  Our doc wanted to titrate her off the depakote and when we did she went right back to how she was in August, an episode every hour throughout the day.  Doc put her back on Depakote and scheduled an increase of her lyrica over a month.  After 2 weeks of no success we started Zonegran today.  So now she is on 4 meds (decreasing lyrica & inc zonegran). 

Kids just amaze me of how resilient they are.  My fingers are crossed........

thanks for the nice email. I would love to chat.

Thanks all and god bless