Posted by headachequeen on April 13, 2005, at 18:31:54
In reply to Re: topomax pain-ramping schedule, posted by rainy on April 13, 2005, at 16:16:45
> I would be very leery of a one week tiratation schedual. At least from my aging standpoint--I was 60 when I started the drug and already a veteran of a number of "psychotropic medications." M is what, 16 and you're not so old yourself. I think that age may have some effect on how we experience cognitive problems, which include forgetting events, other people's diagnoses, this kind of stuff.
> Even now, at a steady 400 since mid January (I think) when I'm under stress I tend to forget stuff easily. It's there, and a neurologoist reminded me that all of this Topamax stuff is reversible--except maybe the bone stuff, we didn't talk about that--but I have problems with recall and word finding. Ha Ha, I say, Senior moments. I'm 62. Senior my eye.
> rainy
I agree with Rainy about the one-week titration.. that is asking for problems...
actually it is running headlong into them, sort of like driving a car headlong down the railroad tracks straight into a runaway freight engine thundering downhill....I have been on Topomax for two-and-a-half years now and am presently at 600 mg a day, three in the morning and three at night...
I have no cognitive problems aside from the ones caused by my condition and while I would like to be able to blame them on Topomax or Tegretol or Holy Cloboazam, Batman!, that would mean that they were regular or frequent, whereas mine happen only on 'our bad days"
When I am in one of my saran wrap days as Rainy, I think, so aptly described it, trying to fight my way out of a room filled with cotton wool or marshmallows or whatever it is that my world becomes, then my cognitive bit kicks in and words disappear --
it is so frustrating to be unable to think of the word I need or want, like learning English all over again...
I learned it once as a child, then came back to English Canada in my teens and learned it again...
now I have the agony of learning it again when these days kick in...
I know the word is there and I keep coming up with words that sound like what I mean and it is totally
agonising for a person who once was always articulate and precise in her speech and writing to have to struggle to be understood...
I find myself using a lot of hand signals, or slipping back into French until the English words come to me...
when I came to in Emergency last winter, I had no English at all, which was fine as the nurses and some of the doctors were bilingual and the nurses told me not to worry about it...
but I knew something was wrong... then it hit me... my husband does not speak English...
I didn't know the day of the week, how many fingers they were sticking in front of my face, and I did not know my name, but I knew that my husband spoke only English, so it was NOT all right unless one of them was bilingual and coming home to translate for me...
Give them credit, no one laughed...
When I am not fighting out of the marshmallow world, then I have no problems...
so I cannot blame even the high dose of topomax for the cognitive lapses...
can't even tag that wretched old tegretol for it...and lately the few times I have turned on the television set, it seems to be a medical programme with someone in the midst or beginning or later effects of some dire epileptical seizure or a problem that comes from a combination of childhood ailments attacking immune systems and the drugs given to combat the epilepsy...
oh tht gives me the warm fuzzies...there I have vented...
but DO NOT, repeat DO NOT titrate faster than two week intervals... you are in a danger zone otherwise....
and if it is done slowly there should be no cognitive problems...Rainy, there is nothing Senior about you...
you are the youngest in mind soul I know....
and I think of you often lately...
shall be in direct touch soon... so much to tell you shall have to write a book <sigh>
kat
poster:headachequeen
thread:5053
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050413/msgs/483859.html