Help me I am being weaned from Carbatrol to Keppra

[tripletdad]

Hang In there

I am on the Generic form of keppra. I was tough and I know some people cant tolerate it (we are all sensitive to different drugs i guess).

I put my poor wife and kids through a lot, I had horrible nightmares, I was loopy or drunk, especially at night. I would get horrible keppra rage, but I had a great neuro that worked with me and saw me every 7 to 10 days to help me get through it.

I found that if I spaced the dosage up over the day 500mg at a time I had less rage and loop issues. it took my 4 months to get over the drunk feeling but that is because my dosage was constantly being increased. It took me about 4 weeeks to get used to a dosage level. I am now on 3000mg (1500mg twice a day) but with my crazy work hours sometimes I space out the doages still, doing 1000, 500, 500, 1000.


I have been on some pheno, dilantin, neurontin, depakote just to name a few and keppra has worked the best for me.

Pheno and dilantin drove to to stop taking meds and trying a lifestyle change, eating right, working out, different E oriented diets etc, it was a 5 yr experiment that was an utter disaster.

I quickly developed severe depression, dropped out of college, had multiple grand mals and had a hard time working. I would NEVER go back to that in a million years. I went on neurontin for a long time and it made me gain weight and prevented most of the grand mals but did a lousy job with my myoclonics and absence seizures (which are often)

Keppra has been the best thing I have tried so far as it has controlled my myoclonics extremely well, and my absence seizures are down 80% and I have not had a tonic clonic on this drug. To me it was worth the battle, but it was tough.

My best advice is be aggressive with getting in front of your doctor and letting them know what you are going through. Get a 2nd or 3rd or 4th opinion from other neuros if you dont think you are getting the care you need. It was when my original childhood neuro retired (20 yrs ago) that I tried to go med free because I hated every neuro I managed to get into (a near impossibility in Southern Ca). However, I finally found one that would work with me (she reminds me of mrs doubtfire) and she has been a big reason I stuck with it.

HANG IN THERE!!!

 

[Eve]

Yesterday when I woke up I felt slightly irritable and I ended up having to take one small dose of valium to calm down.

Well last night when I took my kepra 250mg along with the Carbatrol I immediately felt the sensation of a migraine. As a migraine sufferer , I did not find this to be welcoming . All night long my head hurt like a migraine and I still have one since I woke up this morning.I don't need to start getting migraines.
Is this a part of the Keppra??

I am going to call my neuro this AM and I have an appt with him Monday. It gets hard going over this stuffover the phone. I never get to speak to the DR and I always have to go over this stuff with the office staff via the DR and I am not always sure they got it right.

Triplet, the DR told me not to take the generic Keppra, his office told me that the DR doesn't like it.. Sounds like you had a great Neuro that sae you every week. Mine was expexting me to wait an entire month after being on all this new meds before seeing him. But I made an appt for next Mon he is going to see me 3 weeks early.fft:

I took Dilantin once and it made me feel like I was loosing my mind, it was downright scary. The neuro I was seeing 10 years ago told me that for some reason Dilantin works better with men and tegretol works better on women.

Meetz, thanks for understanding how scared I am am about these new meds. It is hard for some people to understand this crap about how hard it is to go on new seizure meds.

So once again I am going to wait for the nero office to call again today about these darn migraines. Is it the Keppra?????????????????