Hello all,
I was inspired to register after reading a post in "the kitchen" about withdrawal symptoms from getting off of medication. I'll probably post in that thread too, but I'm very curious to hear stories from anyone about weaning off of medication. Especially dilantin. I'm specifically intersted in what people's withdrawal symptoms were like. Did they resemble the auras you used to have? Were they constant, or did they come and go? Did they stay with you for a period of time and then fade? Were there things you did that helped/hurt the process? Have you gone back on medication since?
A littlle history: I've had 3 grand mal seizures. Once in my late teens, which was dismissed as an isolated incident at the time. And two more around age 30--within a few months of each other. Since then I've been on dilantin (for most of that time only 200mg daily) which has kept me seizure-free for 7 years. But the side effects (for me, primarily memory loss and disorganized thinknig) have always torubled me, so with my doctors supervision, I'm half way through a month-long process of weaning off dilatin and seeing how I do without drugs.
Though I've had relatively few seizures,one of them caused a serious shoulder injury which required 9 months of physical rehab (and cost me job, plunging me into debt it took years to work out of). I am excited at the prosepect of life outside of my dilantin haze, but also aware of what can happen if this experiment fails. Cautious optimism, I guess, but a little stressed too...
So, two weeks into weaning-off I feel strange. I have a feeling in my head which bears some resemblance to the zoned-out feeling I used to get from auras (didn't know they were auras at the time), but my auras were "spells" which overcame me for a half a minute or so. This doesn't overcome me at all--I can still function pretty mormally--but it doesn't seem go away either. It's similar to the spaciness you might get with a head cold, and it feel a little like sinus pressure, but somehow different. Thei is accompanied by some edginess--which could just be nervousness about the lack of a medication safety net, but it feels a little bit biochemically induced to me. It's worth noting that I'm generally a pretty even-keeled person, not prone to anxiety, so it's a strange feeling for me.
I'd be curious to know if anyone has experienced anything like this and if so, what happened from there. Thanks for "listening."
H
I was inspired to register after reading a post in "the kitchen" about withdrawal symptoms from getting off of medication. I'll probably post in that thread too, but I'm very curious to hear stories from anyone about weaning off of medication. Especially dilantin. I'm specifically intersted in what people's withdrawal symptoms were like. Did they resemble the auras you used to have? Were they constant, or did they come and go? Did they stay with you for a period of time and then fade? Were there things you did that helped/hurt the process? Have you gone back on medication since?
A littlle history: I've had 3 grand mal seizures. Once in my late teens, which was dismissed as an isolated incident at the time. And two more around age 30--within a few months of each other. Since then I've been on dilantin (for most of that time only 200mg daily) which has kept me seizure-free for 7 years. But the side effects (for me, primarily memory loss and disorganized thinknig) have always torubled me, so with my doctors supervision, I'm half way through a month-long process of weaning off dilatin and seeing how I do without drugs.
Though I've had relatively few seizures,one of them caused a serious shoulder injury which required 9 months of physical rehab (and cost me job, plunging me into debt it took years to work out of). I am excited at the prosepect of life outside of my dilantin haze, but also aware of what can happen if this experiment fails. Cautious optimism, I guess, but a little stressed too...
So, two weeks into weaning-off I feel strange. I have a feeling in my head which bears some resemblance to the zoned-out feeling I used to get from auras (didn't know they were auras at the time), but my auras were "spells" which overcame me for a half a minute or so. This doesn't overcome me at all--I can still function pretty mormally--but it doesn't seem go away either. It's similar to the spaciness you might get with a head cold, and it feel a little like sinus pressure, but somehow different. Thei is accompanied by some edginess--which could just be nervousness about the lack of a medication safety net, but it feels a little bit biochemically induced to me. It's worth noting that I'm generally a pretty even-keeled person, not prone to anxiety, so it's a strange feeling for me.
I'd be curious to know if anyone has experienced anything like this and if so, what happened from there. Thanks for "listening."
H