Panic and seizure disorder and emet

Hi all,

I posted a few times end of last year about my emetophobia. My treatment has come to a crossroads and I'm planning on doing something that has been talked about here in a different capacity - beta blockers.

Here is my situation. When I was 12 I started having seizures. They would come on at night, and I would wake up with just enough time to call my parents and then I would have a seizure. I would always vomit after my seizures. I stopped having them when I was 21, but developed emetophobia as a result.

I was able to successfully aviod vomit (and vomiting) for years, but now I have two daughters. The younger one has vomited three times in the past year. The first time she did it I had what my neurologist calls a panic induced non-epileptic seizure. Basically I paniced to the point where by body had a seizure. I vomited afterwards. Then I went into therapy.

We have tried to slowly acclimate me to other people vomiting. I have gotten to the point where I can watch You Tube videos of people vomiting and I don't panic. It's not pleasant but I can get through it. So my therapist suggested that I might be ready to try to be present, but not involved, the next time my daughter vomits.

Unfortunately this didn't work out so well. It happened a few weeks ago. My husband was attending to her while she was sick and I was approaching the room. I didn't even make it into the room and I felt a seizure coming on. I ran down the stairs and fell on the floor. The seizure was coming, but I didn't want it to happen. I started hitting myself in the head and screaming "No! No! No!" over and over. It seemed to stave off the seizure for a few seconds, but I felt trapped in the house. So I got up and walked around the block, just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and not thinking about what was happening at home up in that bedroom.

I came back home to find my huband in a panic trying to find me, sure that I was having a seizure somewhere in the house. Really terrible for everyone involved.

I had a session with my therapist last night, and just in talking with him about the nature of my seizures I had a flashback of how it feels when I am coming back around after having one. The memory was so strong and terrifying that it triggered the start of another seizure. I dove onto the floor, put my feet on the chair, and asked him to go get me wet towels. For some reason cold wet towels make me feel better. I willed myself not to have a seizure, and it was a close thing, but I got through it without having a seizure.

So now we are at the root of the problem. My seizures as a kid made me have a strong association between vomting and having a seizure. The seizures are absolutely horrid, so now when I see someone vomiting I panic about having a seizure. The panic is quick, and takes less than three seconds to send me into a seizure. So it is a terrible loop that we must break somehow.

We are, with the supervision of my physician, going to try beta blockers. My therapist says that my panic attacks are not typical, in that they manifest in a seizure. So the plan is to have me take a beta blocker, then go into my session with my therapist and talk about my seizures to see if that sets them off. If it does not, we will continue to have 4 or 5 similar sessions, then try to have a session on half a dose, or no dose. I will not be on beta blockers all the time, just prior to my sessions.

After I can talk about the seizures and not actually have one, I think the next step might be to try to be around vomiting people with the beta blockers. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to be around sick people without them, which will be planned and supervised. If this works the last challenge will be my ability to cope with the sudden unexpected sickness of one of my children.

My worst fear is that I will be alone with my kids when they get sick, and t