Generics?

[Inaara]

Someone linked to an article once and I've sent it to my doctor...who is utterly ignoring it. I've also read up on a lot of the threads here (and a few people's experiences) about how going from a brand name to a generic can totally mess up your body and cause you to have reactions to a medication that you've never had before.

So, here's my problem. I'm reasonably sure the generic topiramate they've had me on for two months now isn't the problem (even though they sometimes tend to even randomly switch generics of that one out on me, which makes me nervous) because when I started reacting to the tegretol and went off that, I didn't seem to have any problems, even with the generic topiramate.

The brand name tegretol, however, gave me a rash and made my throat close up to where I couldn't swallow, so that was a bit of a mess.

So now I started on Keppra this week. Been on it for about 4 days (including today) and am already getting a rash on my hands and head...and it's a generic. Got a phone call in to the doc (who hasn't called back yet, it usually takes her most of a day to call back and sometimes most of the next day as well) about it, but I am wondering if I should demand she put me back on brand name topamax (I was on that for years and never had issues at all until they started screwing around with all this generic crap) and put me on brand name keppra before trying to swap meds out - AGAIN - to see if the reaction is because of the generics or if it's actually the medicine itself doing it.

I'm kind of getting tired of all the med hopping, especially when the tegretol worked decently I suppose, but the keppra seems to actually be working a lot better even than the tegretol, even at the ramp-up dose. On the (generic) keppra, I've had only two seizures (one nocturnal - I was having those about 2-3 times a week even on the tegretol) and my jerks have been a lot better than they were even on the tegretol...so I'm a little reluctant to just "give up" on the stuff because it seems to be working better than the others so far, but if it's going to cause rashes and other reactions, I obviously can't stick with it.

Grr...guess this is why they call it "practicing" medicine, lol.

[Rae1889]

I know how you feel on a small scale. I have only been on meds since October and have had issues with Lamictal (was on generic, brand name gave me the rash) and barely lasted a month on Dilantin before I got a rash. My guess is that you and me are very sensitive to chemicals in the body.

I havent been on meds for almost 2 weeks (on monday) and its really messing with me. its not fair.