side effects

So I am dealing with two sets of side effects, now.
One is the old side effect of head-spins and queasiness in the morning. Lasts for about 10-15 minutes and is then gone. In the grand scheme of things, this is minor and totally unimportant. If I live with this for the rest of my life on occassional mornings but have no seizures, FINE! I would be THRILLED!
That side effect is likely from the Trileptal, as it seems to have been in the past.
The other side effect is the weight gain. I'm over 210 now, whereas I was in the low 190s a couple of months ago. I know that blaming the medicine is the easy way out. I could have been and should have been exercising more and eating better, having know going in that this was a side effect.
Nonetheless, I've gained nearly 20 pounds and am SOOO frustrated. I am seeing the Dr. in about 2 weeks and perhaps something can be done. Having controled the seizures relatively well, however, I don't think he will (nor will I in the end) want to change the dosages and go fiddling around just so I can lose weight more easily.
Time for better exercise routines (including going to the gym MORE OFTEN) and perhaps eating better and eating less - what a concept. But damn it that last part is just so hard to do... My diet didn't change the entire time I gained these ~20 pounds, which makes me want to blame the medication more and more, and having something to blame makes it all so much easier to deal with...
*sigh*

again???

My head is swimming a bit this morning... Not sure if the side-effects have returned or not, but needless to say it doesn't make me happy. Fortunately they are not for an extended period of time, but none-the-less, I don't like spending the first part of my morning at work trying to focus on the computer and not concentrate on my head doing a swirly.

the blahs

Last night I curled up on the couch with Mary and was hit with a case of the blahs. Part of me is wondering if it was because I had experienced a mild seizelet the night before (the type where my face twitches, not a grand-mal or tonic colonic). I spent Sunday morning with a sore face (spare me the jokes of "does your face hurt? cuz it's killin me!"), took some Advil, and after a while, was physically ok. But am I mentally? I still wonder sometimes how my epilepsy will affect those around me as I get older - Mary, my parents, my children (or child) to be...
I don't know if this is what was giving me the blahs or not. Mary said they came on while we were watching Pretty Woman. huh...
This morning (A day and a half later) I had mild dizzy spells for a couple of minutes.
The twitching is also becoming more noticeable and (I think?) more frequent, but the twitching is not so severe as to diminish my capacity for doing anything. It is the sort of thing, for example, where my fingers will be "waiting" over the keyboard for me to formulate my thoughts, when suddenly they will "twitch out" and strike a couple of keys randomly. Or I will be holding a cup, and I will have a brief twitch where, while I don't really think I will throw the cup somewhere then, the though of what will happen in the future scares me. Sometimes I look at my hands stretched out in front of me when I feel this way and I see ever so slight trembles. Trembles, Blahs, Dizzy spells? Or no Seizures? I don't know.
This seems to be the common dilemna faced by most anyone with brain issues - what is the balances between side effects and control?

New article on Epilepsy

So I found this article on CNN not long ago:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/13/depression.drugs.suicide.risk/index.html?hpt=T2
It made me think, as not only have I tried the majority of those meds, but I am on 2 of the 5 meds which reputedly have a higher risk of suicide. Yay (notice the dripping sarcasm?). Now I don't find myself dealing with suicidal thoughts. Indeed, most of the time I find myself to be quite happy. I have a wonderful network of friends and family, and am getting married to the most amazing woman in the world (sorry single guys on the prowl, out there - you lost out!).

But I can't help wonder when I read articles like this... How much of what we read in articles such as this, or hear from our doctors and read on medicine bottles (such as side-effect warnings) become self-fulfilling prophecies? Do people kill themselves because they think that something is bad and they must be part of the rare % of population taking the medication who is destined to kill themselves? And what about weight gain?
I have been on Depakote for a couple of months now. I'm fatter by about 15 pounds. I am trying to be more active at the gym (I was before, but not as consistently) and eat better (my diet before was terrible), but I am not seeing anything improve. Is my metabolism with Depakote affected? Does Depakote infuse Pig DNA into my system?
Or would I not have gained weight if I hadn't been worried about it to begin with? If I can get my fat-ass back down into the 180s, I'll know for sure.

another cluster

I will go see my Doctor again this afternoon, having had yet another cluster on Friday night. Yay. I am relatively confident he will raise the Depakote, and that will put me to 2400mg of Trileptal and 2000 of Depakote. I feel like a pill popping junkie. Every morning I am throwing down a mouthful of pills that my fiance is always worried I will choke on (primarily because she struggles to swallow one pill, whereas I can down about 15 at once).

Mary is away

So with Mary away, I (again) slept on the couch and the cat (again) woke me up at some ungodly hour. I suppose to some extent I should be worried about having a seizure on the couch, but I get frustrated enough about the epilepsy in general that thinking about where I might have a seizure while sleeping just seems nit-picky to me. I seem to by and large be much more upbeat than I was the other day, but I am finding that my "depression," if you will, that I normally ensure post-seizure seems worse over these past few months.
Is it because the seizures are in clusters?
Is it because of the new meds I am on?
I don't know, but I suppose at the end of the day what really matters is that I cope with it! :-)
Mary is getting married to an epileptic. There is a reason why her nickname is Saint Mary. To put up with me, irrespective of my epilepsy, takes quite a soul! :-)

gettin punchy

So monday night I had another cluster - three this time. After the first two, Mary woke me up and gave me an Atavan (sp?) which my doctor said could stop seizures in the middle of a cluster. Well, I only had three, so maybe it did work. I don't know.
Apparently, I was a little too close to the windowsill that night, as not only do I have a bump on my head, but I tore up my knuckles/hand pretty good. So good, in fact, that I got blood all over the sheets (sorry Mary!). Ugh. Not a good night. Called in sick as usual and slept most of the day.
I really, really hate epilepsy. When my parents called that morning (I had emailed them what had happened), I picked up the phone and responded "Mary's house of Milkshakes!" My mom chuckled and Mary laughed, but when I tried a similar joke later with my doctor, I got no reaction. *sigh*
I already had an appointment with my doctor for Monday, so I will see him then to measure how my Depakote levels are in my liver. He just bumped me up to 1500mg a day.
FYI - the Big E Sucks.