Lacosamide, the ups + downs.

Today I'm not exactly feeling brilliant, feeling sick, dull headache, very tired but can't seem to sleep  and have absolutely no appetite (very strange for me.. I don't even fancy chocolate... WHAT!!!) So most of the day will probably be spent doing the dreaded "taking it easy" mostly involving lying on my bed. Fab. With nothing much else to focus on I thought it might be appropriate to post a little update on the medicine I've recently started taking, Lacosamide. 

I want to say how amazed I am at the effect it's had on seizures. In fact apart from a few absences, I've not had a single seizure in just over a week :D! By now I'm used to not getting my hopes up too high but, maybe this is a sign of positive things to come? Only time will tell :)

I feel nauseous quite a lot, not all the time though which is a plus point :) Headache upon headache more days than not which isn't so good some are so intense that they make me feel sick to the stomach and want to cry they hurt so much :( but mostly they are just regular headaches. My sleep is quite disrupted... some nights I can sleep a good 9/10 hours, one night in the last week I slept for over 12 straight through! Then there are nights where I barely sleep at all, I seem to wake up again and again for seemingly no reason. During the day though I seem to keep most of the tiredness at bay, mostly by distracting myself. But of course sometimes it just creeps up and overwhelms everything else so you have no choice but to sleep for a few hours. No fun!

Ooo one good thing though is that I was warned by several people including doctors and my nurse that the dizziness and effect on balance that Lacosamide has is very likely to become apparent... but apart from the odd tipping of balance I've barely noticed it at all :D Woo!

There are particularly bad days though like today. But we all have those from time to time.  

There is one thing playing on my mind though... it's not recommended that you take Lacosamide when you're pregnant. But what if I want to have children in a few years? If this medicine works will I have to unravel everything again and risk life being turned on it's head should seizures return? Hmmm something that I will have to bring up in my next appointment I think, just to get it off my mind. 

But given that at the moment I am increasing my dose weekly (another one tomorrow.. urgh..) I'm not doing all that bad. Fingers crossed the side effects will pass once my dose is stable :)