Monday Morning Depression

I have not woken up this depressed in a long, long time. The simple explanation for Mary was that I was unable to get out of bed at 5am to go to the gym with her - something I desperately need to do more. Granted, I had slept fitfully last night with very strange and disconcerting dreams, but still...
My weight is starting to depress me more and more. I try and eat less, eat better, but I can't lose eve a pound. I have BALLOONED to over 210, where but a couple of months ago I was 190. Another pair of pants this morning proved useless as I couldn't even button them closed. I hate this - I want to blame Depakote for this gain in weight, and while I am sure that it has comething to do with it, I also have to thank Depakote for what seems to be the most stable I have been in a long time as far as seizure control in concerned.
Do I want to be a little porky piglet with no seizures or someone with the occassional episode who has his weight more under control. Can't I have both?
I meet with my doctor a week from today, and perhaps he will have a solution, but damn it I am depressed this morning.
There are 138 days left til Mary and I get married. I love her SO much, and she looks amazing right now. She deserves a groom walking down the isle as fit as she is - not someone who can't fit into the clothes they've been wearing for 10 years by a good two inches.
As Mary will sometimes say to me, I will try to "Snap out of it." But as I said, I haven't been this depressed in a long time.

What do I say?

I am having another appointment with the Dr. in a couple of weeks. Do I ask him for a reduction in my dosage of Depakote because the weight gain is disturbing me? Do I suck it up and try and go above and beyond at the gym and diet to compensate?
How much does or can my diet affect the frequency of my seizures?
I don't like the fact that this frickety-frack-#$%(&#%* disorder is not yet capable of being dealt with as well as we all would hope, but... nothing to be done, I suppose.
I just want to have what appears to be a relatively well controlled cocktail of drugs that DON'T make me a fat blob of porky-pigness.
Ugh.

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).