Off Balance and Night Sweats

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Hello, I'm 39 and just got diagnosed with epilepsy which has been an out of the blue shock. They can't tell me what triggered my seizures (had 11 now since February) and each time they tell me it's a virus that's the trigger... I'm not convinced but anyway but my eeg, MRI, ct scans and X-rays have all come back as normal... I was put on sodium valproate 1000mg per day and after my 11the seizure in May they added lamotrigine (lamactal) which I am stepping up each week to get to 300g per day and since then I've been sweating through two or so tshirts per night, seems to be mainly on my chest/neck, I wake up and I'm drenched which is shit as it's breaking my sleep up along with going to the toilet. The other that's happening is that I have no balance sometimes when walking and it feels like I am going to fall over and my vision gets jumpy/twitchy and I have to literally stop as it's disconcerting - I play a lot of sport so I get out of the house a lot and it's making me not want to go out, I also live on my own so it's really hard as it's making me anxious - I never was an anxious/sweaty/off balance person before taking any of these drugs mentioned. I'm also drinking a huge amount of water, perhaps 8/9 pints per day. Anyone else feel sweaty/thirsty/anxious/off balance?

Comments

The doctors only go off what

Submitted by whatitisepilepsy on Wed, 2017-07-19 - 19:39

The doctors only go off what they learned in school to protect their self, kind of like Robots. Just try new things that make sense to help your body. Its very scary for us, and the doctors can't understand completely. May I suggest talking to your doctor about a med called Lamotrging, If that dose not work, I went a whole year without arua or seizures taking a martial arts class. It was not so much what I learned, the over 100 jumping jack, stretching, working my body at least 5 days a week. You have heard it before," use it or lose it". Exercise make sense. As soon as I stopped everything came back with in a week. Good luck, life with out seizures can be amazing, always try new things don't let it win.

dude! quit the spamming about

Submitted by Amy Jo on Thu, 2017-07-20 - 08:49

dude! quit the spamming about lamotrigine already! read a person's post and respond if you've got something useful instead of sounding like you are trying to convert someone to your person religion. not every drug works for every person, geesh! she's taking lamotrigine and it's probably causing the side effects that are a problem for her, at least my child had some of those same problematic side effects.

dear anonhaze,lamotrigine can

Submitted by Amy Jo on Thu, 2017-07-20 - 09:09

dear anonhaze,lamotrigine can cause at least some of those side effects, all AEDs can have lasting side effects for some patients but proving that can take a while. lamotrigine and valproic acid are a fussy combo. our child had vertigo, dizziness, nausea and such effects on lamotrigine (which was started in the hope would help control the complex partials) at first they thought it was a difficult to treat sinus infection (two series of heavy duty antibiotics fixed the infection but not the symptoms). then they thought it should be an inner ear - it wasn't but the antibiotics and getting in to see PT and an ENT dragged things out. after a month of having to pick my kid up from school many days I asked the doc how we might eliminate lamotrigine from the suspect list because it sure sounded like a toxic reaction some people have. she didn't think that was the problem because my kid only took a moderate dose but said we could split her daily dose into three instead of two times and that was all it took. for our child splitting the dose into three or switching to extended release would be enough - then it was becoming clear that the side effects were worst 60-90 min after her morning or evening dose. then they tried to up the dose but that messed her up every time!!! so we stuck with a moderate dose. if you take oral BC or some other drug that interacts with lamotrigine, that can also cause problems. some people may be at a toxic dose (without drug interactions) and splitting the dose or extended release will not help. have ypu had your blood levels checked?funny thing is we added generic keppra to get off the lamotrigine but saw what was probably the beginning of suicidal ideation on that so it was like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. so she's still on lamotrigine which controls the atypical absence they discovered after she was reevaluated, kinda lucky we discovered that. if you have a decent and smart doc, they will want to work with you on figuring this out.

dear anonhaze,lamotrigine can cause at least some of those side effects, all AEDs can have lasting side effects for some patients but proving that can take a while. lamotrigine and valproic acid are a fussy combo. our child had vertigo, dizziness, nausea and such effects on lamotrigine (which was started in the hope would help control the complex partials) at first they thought it was a difficult to treat sinus infection (two series of heavy duty antibiotics fixed the infection but not the symptoms). then they thought it should be an inner ear - it wasn't but the antibiotics and getting in to see PT and an ENT dragged things out. after a month of having to pick my kid up from school many days I asked the doc how we might eliminate lamotrigine from the suspect list because it sure sounded like a toxic reaction some people have. she didn't think that was the problem because my kid only took a moderate dose but said we could split her daily dose into three instead of two times and that was all it took. for our child splitting the dose into three or switching to extended release would be enough - then it was becoming clear that the side effects were worst 60-90 min after her morning or evening dose. then they tried to up the dose but that messed her up every time!!! so we stuck with a moderate dose. if you take oral BC or some other drug that interacts with lamotrigine, that can also cause problems. some people may be at a toxic dose (without drug interactions) and splitting the dose or extended release will not help. have ypu had your blood levels checked?funny thing is we added generic keppra to get off the lamotrigine but saw what was probably the beginning of suicidal ideation on that so it was like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. so she's still on lamotrigine which controls the atypical absence they discovered after she was reevaluated, kinda lucky we discovered that. if you have a decent and smart doc, they will want to work with you on figuring this out.

dear anonhaze,lamotrigine can cause at least some of those side effects, all AEDs can have lasting side effects for some patients but proving that can take a while. lamotrigine and valproic acid are a fussy combo. our child had vertigo, dizziness, nausea and such effects on lamotrigine (which was started in the hope would help control the complex partials) at first they thought it was a difficult to treat sinus infection (two series of heavy duty antibiotics fixed the infection but not the symptoms). then they thought it should be an inner ear - it wasn't but the antibiotics and getting in to see PT and an ENT dragged things out. after a month of having to pick my kid up from school many days I asked the doc how we might eliminate lamotrigine from the suspect list because it sure sounded like a toxic reaction some people have. she didn't think that was the problem because my kid only took a moderate dose but said we could split her daily dose into three instead of two times and that was all it took. for our child splitting the dose into three or switching to extended release would be enough - then it was becoming clear that the side effects were worst 60-90 min after her morning or evening dose. then they tried to up the dose but that messed her up every time!!! so we stuck with a moderate dose. if you take oral BC or some other drug that interacts with lamotrigine, that can also cause problems. some people may be at a toxic dose (without drug interactions) and splitting the dose or extended release will not help. have ypu had your blood levels checked?funny thing is we added generic keppra to get off the lamotrigine but saw what was probably the beginning of suicidal ideation on that so it was like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. so she's still on lamotrigine which controls the atypical absence they discovered after she was reevaluated, kinda lucky we discovered that. if you have a decent and smart doc, they will want to work with you on figuring this out.