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.

Go Depakote!

So I am pretty pleased that after about 3 weeks, I am tolerating the Depakote extremely well (knock on wood, fingers crossed!) - by and large my morning dizzy spells are virtually non-existant... a couple of VERY small instances of disorientation/dizziness, but overall I am very happy!
The main issue I DO have is that I am starting to notice what the doctor was talking about when he said that some people gain weight on Depakote. I need to use the old "mind power" to stop myself from gorging, as I do tend to feel much hungrier, and while I have gained a few pounds, I don't want to jump to the conclusion that it is the meds, as Christmas was certainly a food-fest!
But again, Yay Depakote! :-)

Seizure clusters

On Sunday I had another cluster of seizures, my third in as many months. Clearly the Vimpat is not controlling my seizures as well as we would hope. On Monday, my doctor raised the dosage from 300mg to 350mg, and WOW what a difference. I left work yesterday and went home, unable to cope with the enhanced side effects. I was in a stupor for most of the day, completely unable to focus. I tried to do anything that I considered basic and elementary for helping me focus on something, including counting to 100. I got to 72, I think. Very frustrating.
I went to my doctor this morning. Mary came with me. After talking about all the options, we are going to take me off of the Vimpat and try Depakote with the Trileptal instead. After that it looks like we have a few other drug cocktails we could try before we would consider surgery, although the possibility of that seems to be looming out there and it scares the crap out of me.

Drug Interactions

So this morning I am looking up interactions for my Trileptal and Vimpat - I'm on the maximum dosage for Trileptal and about 75% of Vimpat. I've been trying to figure out why my side-effects happen only in the morning - interaction with caffeine from my coffee? Medication still left in my system from my taking it the night before? (I usually take my night meds around 10pm and my morning around 7:30 - do I need to be taking exactly 12 hours apart?)
It's frustrating to deal with side-effects.
But if the drugs prevent the seizures and seizelets (little seizures), is it worth it?
Topamax messed with my memory something fierce, so that one had to go - but is 20-30 minutes of dizzy spells, blurred vision, wacked-out equilibrium, and the occassional inability to come up with the word I want (granted, that could be age, but I feel like I didn't have that problem this often before my medication increases and poly-therapy) worth it?
I'll figure it out, I guess.

is it dizziness?

It's hard to say that I am "dizzy" in the morning. I am at a loss to say why focusing upwards "cures" the symptoms... At least for a couple of moments (sometimes for good).
Should I be looking elsewhere for the cause? Perhaps my morning coffee? I generally only have the one cup a day. Perhaps I switch to decaf? Ugh. I love coffee