Side effects with zarontin

Welcome to the Coping With Epilepsy Forums

Welcome to the Coping With Epilepsy forums - a peer support community for folks dealing (directly or indirectly) with seizure disorders. You can visit the forum page to see the list of forum nodes (categories/rooms) for topics.

Please have a look around and if you like what you see, please consider registering an account and joining the discussions. When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no ads, access to members only (ie. private) forum nodes and more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!

1

1nation

New
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Points
0
My 4 year old was diagnosed with epilepsy in March with tonic clonic seizures. She was put on Keppra and has done pretty good with it. However she has still been having seizures. They have not been as frequent so maybe once we have the right dose she will have good control. We got her results back from her EEG Thursday and it showed she is also having petit mal seizures and he confirmed that she is having the myoclonic seizures at night. Anyway he put her on Zarontin as an additional med to help with this. He started her out with 1/2 tsp at night for a week and then she needs to take 1/2 in morning and at night. Last night was the 3rd night and it was terrible. She cried, screamed, flipped, tossed, set up, was hot, and talked in her sleep all night long. At times it was like she was scared. I didn't get any sleep and neither did my husband. She was so tired this morning and felt like she was going to throw up. I got her to take a 2 hr nap and she has felt better. I'm sure it's the side effects from the meds. Does anyone know if this will continue? Will she get use to it and start sleeping better? I'm afriad this will have her sleep deprieved and trigger a big seizure. I hate to even give her the medicine tonight. When it starts getting dark and time for bed I get knots in my stomache so I can imagine how she feels.
 
Often the transition periods (ramping up or ramping down) for the meds are the most unpleasant. If you think your daughter can stand it, hang in there -- things might settle down once she's been at a stable dose for a while. If the process seems to get worse though, feel free to contact the neuro and discuss opting out of the Zarontin.

Have you and the neuro discussed dietary apporaches? The Modified Atkins Diet has shown promise, especially with absence seizures. More info here: http://www.atkinsforseizures.com/
 
I hope so....I gave her 1mg of melatonin last night hoping that would help her sleep but it did not help at all. She went to sleep fine but after about an hour it was horrible. She probably only had 2 hrs of sleep last night.
 
Poor thing. For both of you, I hope things even out over the next few days. But go ahead and call the neuro either way to let him know what's going on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom