Hi Malso...welcome to the to the site & glad you found us.
I don't have complex partial seizures; mine are the tonic-clonic and simple partial variety, but I do take Topamax and can give you some of my experiences with it. Topamax definitely earned its nickname of "Dopamax" when I first started it, and I began on a very low dose (25 mg a day!) at first. I would forget words, my short term memory got pretty lousy, and I would have to re-read things to remember them...none of these things are typical of me. It took the doctor about 3 weeks to ramp me up to my current dose of 200 mg a day, and after about 3 months on this dose, it hasn't been so much of a stupid-making pill for me...lol. Pretty much all of the cognitive side effects have worn off (good thing, or else I would have asked for something else). If I am overly tired, I do have the rare instance where I walk into a room and forget what I was going to do.
The physical side effects I had were weight loss, which was major for me--18 pounds that I did not need to lose since I was thin to begin with. Of course, a lot of people say that this side effect is welcome since a lot of the other AEDs tend to cause a lot of weight gain. It's also caused some blurred vision, but nothing major to the point where I need glasses. Not to be gross, but it causes diarrhea at higher doses, and this is why I was stopped at 200 mg and Lamictal XR was added. When you first start Topamax, it causes a kind of tingly feeling in your hands/fingers; this went away for me after a couple of weeks but it can be annoying at first. I also had a bit of gait unsteadiness--which I am told is a rare side effect--and it makes me very thirsty for some reason.
I haven't had too many issues with the Topamax; it's just during the titration period it can be a bit of a pain to deal with, especially the cognitive side effects.
I hope that adding the Topamax goes well for you, and again, welcome!
