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Comment by anodyne33 | Hacker News Reader

Weirdly enough when I was epileptic ('12-'17, couple of brain surgeries fixed that up) the auras I would experience were an occasional olfactory hallucination. I can't imagine there's any physiological connection outside of the brain but it's still a weird coincidence to read about "smelling" a seizure.

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Yeah I always have a metallic taste in my mouth before a seizure. I wonder if it's related.

From what I've learned auras can manifest in all kids of manners and that's one of the prevalent ones. I have a few friends with migraines and that's common for them as well. There's a really, really strong correlation between the mechanisms at work in Epilepsy and migraines.

to me that's a pretty good indication that there must be hormonal fluctuations before a seizure. Sorry to hear you're suffering from the condition, it must not be pleasant.

This is fascinating. If you do not mind me asking, what was the smell that you experienced?

I don't remember anything specifically but I do seem to remember that it wasn't any one particular thing. If it was immediately pre-ictal I wouldn't have been likely to remember at all. I had two generalized seizures before I made it to my neuro and started Depakote (bad stuff) and then just had complex partial seizures. I'd just zone out for a half a minute or so with no memory of that time. There were times that I was walking down the street with coworkers, had a seizure and dropped my lunch and just kept walking along the whole time.

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