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Medication Recommendations/Experience for Two Year Old Daughter
Sun, 09/23/2018 - 19:25Topic: Medication Issues
Good evening! My two-year old daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy in April 2018 but we're also headed into genetic testing for a potential genetic disorder. She's currently on 4 ml of Keppra twice daily but we've reached the ceiling of Keppra and will need to find another medication upon her next seizure.
Her doctor has recommended either Lamictal or Trileptal. I don't care for the profile of side-effects of either. I was wondering if anyone else could provide some information, experience, or recommendation with these drugs either with their own toddler or even themselves.
Thank you in advance.
Brooklyn's Mom
(aka Jessica)
You are not going to 'like'
Submitted by Amy Jo on Sat, 2018-09-29 - 13:59
You are not going to 'like' the side effect profiles for any epilepsy medication. They all have potential downsides but most people do reasonably well, some just are ok, and a few fare poorly. Some side effects are workable (temporary or not a big deal), other side effects can cause one to switch drugs. Our child has taken keppra (hated it, awful reaction but did reduce seizures some), trileptal (loved it but got off it later on for complex reason, only had brief tiredness when increasing the dose and was taking a super high dose because it really reduced the seizures every time we increased it) and lamotrigine (wanted to get off it due to side effect issues but worked out a way to stay on it because it controlled the generalized seizures they discovered had started sometime after the initial partial seizure diagnosis). When a drug works, that's a wonderful thing unless the side effects have a lasting impact on quality of life. At one point our child was on all those drugs at the same time and they didn't completely control the partials. We were told she has a genetic epilepsy after they discovered a seizure type that is only associated with genetic epilepsiesThere are lot of unknowns in epilepsy - e.g. how a certain person will react to a drug. There is info but it doesn't always light the way - e.g. some genetic epilepsies they just don't know enough to make that info useful yet so you are still in the dark.