[northville]

what are your personal experiences with Geritol.

at the moment my son is not on medication as i feel it does not effect his life to much if at all however the seizures are becoming more frequent.
please do not make fun of this situation, he is a 4 year old little boy who has had the misfortune of having a stroke at 3 years old which caused epilepsy to developer. i think getting some sensible answers to help him live a normal life is not to much to ask. thanks.
the consultant suggested Geritol Ive only heard baaed thongs about it though my son is very active and out going your typical boisterous boy i do not want this to change just because of melds. I'm thankful that he does not have full seizures yet he has Wat is similar to absenses just comes from a dif part of his brain, his consultt says this is not normal for the type of epilepsy he has and he should and will have full seizures(scary). there is only 1 thing he has had to stop for a while because of this and thats motorcross, i think that it would be to dangerous to send him off on his bike at the momnt i had hoped he would have grown out of it by now, no such luck.

[Jason]

Don't use Tegretol, use Prozac. Lil

[Todd P]

My son had his first seizure when he was 8 months old. His first seizure was 6 1/2 hours long! He was immediately placed on Trileptal. After that, he continued to have breakthrough seizures several times a week. Each seizure would last for about 30 seconds but would leave him so tired after wards that he would sleep for about 3 hours. There was no warning to when he would have a seizure. He would just be sitting and playing and then fall over and have a grand Mal seizure. It got so bad that he had to wear a helmet.

With Epilepsy, medication is a trial and error. The doctors aren't 100% sure what is going to work until they try it. Since Trileptal itself wasn't do int the job, we decided to switch to Keppra. After a few months, we added Topamax to Keppra. That did the trick, however, Topamax made my son anorexic!

My son was actually diagnosed with anorexia at the age of 2 1/2 years old! I was so disgusted with Topamax that I begged his neurologist to take him off of the drug. His doctor was hesitant since it had stopped his seizures so he added a new medication in addition to the two my son was already taking, Cyproheptadine, to increase his appetite. Thankfully, that did the trick.

This October will mark the two year anniversary that my son will be seizure free and the doctor will start weening him off his medications. Hopefully this means that he will have outgrown his Epilepsy. *fingers crossed*

TEGRETOL is not a drug we have tried. I googled it and no red flags popped up. The most funny thing that stood out was that one of the more serious side effects was that it causes seizures. I thought that was funny for an anti-seizure medication.

Only you, your son, and his doctor can decide whether or not he needs Tegretol. My doctor told me that there are NO medications out there that can cure Epilepsy but it can make seizures manageable. So essentially, he may still have seizures but they may be less intense.

[valgal115]

My daughter has a brain tumor that causes seizure. She takes Oxcarbazepine. I like this med because it has fewer side efforts. One of the main problems with this drug is it lowers the salt in the blood. But as I have found out, All I needed to do was increase the salt intake to a higher level, Where it doesn't bother her to much. And for any seizure lasting over 5 Min's. I think you should try Diazepam rectal gel. It stops it right a way. I hope I have helped. May God bless your family.We will be praying for you. Please talk to your doctor about these melds. After a lot of different melds these ones are the 2 that has helped us out the most.


BQ: We tried Keppra . Had a bad experience with it. It cause major mood swings.

[Kathiria]

I've been on Tegretol XR (extended release, which keeps the blood level constant) for over thirty years, and for me it works great. However, that's just me. Finding a medication that works is only done by trial and error.

Wishing your son a healthy life with fully controlled seizures.

All the best.