More medicine changes

689 days ago - July 3rd 2012 - I had my first ever (recognized) partial seizure. Soon after that my doctor and I started messing with my meds. Here we are, almost 2 years later, still making changes.

Almost about a year ago I went to my doctor telling him that I was having horrible emotional side effects from the Keppra that he put me on and said that I would like to try Lamictal instead, since that was the other medicine that he recommended. So I, very slowly, started taking Lamictal and building up to an acceptable level. 3 blood tests and 4 months later, I got to that acceptable level.

As we were doing the change he told me to try being on both for a while as Lamictal often offsets the side effects of Keppra. So I did. I tried it for a while and still felt off. I was more tired than normal and had problems thinking clearly - as I noticed about Tegretol after coming off of it. Exactly 1 month after starting the full dosage, he changed the way I take the medicine - from 1 Lamical in the morning and 1 at night (1x1) and 1x1 with Keppra, to .5x1.5 Lamictal and 1x1 Keppra.

Changing the dosing times made me feel more of the emotional effects that I had felt prior, so a few months into that dosage I switch myself to 1x1 Lamictal and .5x1.5 Keppra. The emotional side effects lessened, but they were/are still there.

We had set an appointment to talk today, at which I explained my situation - I changed my dosage again, and am still having seizure, but much less often (I'm at 23 days right now, which is near a record for 2014.) He mentioned trying to come off the Keppra and possibly trying Vimpat - or not adding Vimpat and just coming off of the Keppra. I agreed, stating that the reason that I went on the Lamictal was to come off of the Keppra, but I would rather not add anything else quite yet. I had actually thought about this while driving to the appointment... what is the next step?

So that's our current plan - I'm lessening the Keppra, v e r y    s l o w l y. lowering by a half pill per day at one month intervals (.5x1 today, .5x.5 in 1 month, etc.) As always, this is a bit scary and a bit exciting. I'm looking forward to getting rid of some of the side effects but, as I did when coming off of the Tegretol, I'm a bit scared of having more seizures, or starting to have Tonic Clonic seizures again. The other problem is that this is, once again, a 4-month process, so I won't really know the outcome for quite some time.

I'll try to keep you all posted.