Posted by Mitch on November 10, 2001, at 10:28:51
In reply to Re: Trileptal and topomax, posted by Sue4 on November 10, 2001, at 9:37:51
> Btw, I was very motivated to stick with Topomax, I wanted it to work because after Depakote, I never, ever wanted to try a medication that required blood tests or gave me such horrible side effects. I would rather take my chances with the mortality issues associated w/ a diagnois of BPII than be given other very known associated mortality risk factors from the side effects of medications that supposedly help treat the BPII diagnosis. Thus, from this point on, I will only consider meds that do not require blood monitoring...trileptal is one of them....the nausea you experienced on trileptal, how long did it last...did you give it a sufficient trial?? Or do you think it had do to w/ the fact that it lowered the sodium in your blood levels, which is a side effect of trileptal??
Hi Sue,
I wouldn't get too worried about needing blood tests for a med. I look at it more as an inconvenience. A lot of blood testing is "required" just to monitor the plasma level to see if you are "in the therapeutic range" (basically just to gather info for your pdoc and/or cover their ass-if blood level monitoring is recommended by the manufacturer).
As far as the Trileptal goes it was a switch from Neurontin. I am very very touchy with meds. Neurontin works really well for me in the 600-900mg/day range. However, I developed this spasm in my eustachian tubes-a periodic "thumping" and "clicking" in my ears whenever I take 300mg or more as a single dose. So we switched it to Trileptal. I started off very low-just 150mg/day for a week. Then titrated to 225mg/day for another week, then to 300mg/day. When I hit the 300mg/day dosage is when the nausea kicked in. It was similar in a way to the nausea you get from an SSRI. I don't know if it was due to lowered sodium or not. It is a fairly common sfx for it-so who knows? I also felt somewhat activated and "wirey". It could have been the withdrawal from the Neurontin, though. I was just on it about three or four weeks, max. I am back on lower dose Neurontin again, now.
Mitch
poster:Mitch
thread:83661
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011104/msgs/83777.html