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.