Second surgery from insomnia.

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finalpoet

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I take 4 meds for my epilepsy. One is Trileptal and it's causing insomnia. I just spoke to my neurologist and we're going to reduce the dosage slowly and see if I can sleep. If I continue to not sleep, she said we'll be forced to continue the med and seek other methods. If I still can't sleep, I'm going to discontinue the med completely and look into a second brain surgery. That's because I'd rather be epileptic than never sleeping. I'd rather have a surgery that might kill me than never sleeping. Almost everything is based on possibilities but I still want your opinion? Would you do similar in these possible situations?
 
I can relate to the frustration of not getting a good night's sleep. I have nocturnal seizures as well as a movement disorder that can cause frequent brief awakenings. I never really know which I've had at the time of occurrence (ie. partial motor seizure or an episode related to the other issue) BUT both have been helped by Fycompa. It also has a sedating effect such that within 30 minutes of taking it I need to be lying down and ready to sleep.

It goes without saying that everybody responds differently to the various medications, but just wanted to share what I have found to be helpful.
 
Hi finalpoet,

Have you ever had a sleep study done? If you haven't tell your neuro to do one this could be the reason why your are having seizures. I had one done only to find I was having seizures in my sleep about 2 hrs. before I would wake up. I was on Trileptal for a short time the drug is very much like tegretol and you can't eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice because the enzymes in the fruit will mess up the med.
I've looked into have 2 surgeries done like you mentioned but it all comes down to how successful it would be and my neurosurgeon told me it wouldn't help me at all because I have 3 areas now in my brain that are triggering seizures. Get some testing done and take it from there. I wish you the best of luck and May God Bless You!

Sue
 
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