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Help needed

Fri, 07/13/2007 - 09:42
Hi all, Iam a new member to this forum.I have an 8 year old daughter suffering from refractory epilepsy.She has complex partial seizures along with myoclonic epilepsy.She has seizures since the first day of life.She is heavily medicated.Her seizures was under control for past 3-4 months except for having one or two 3 minutes episodes. Recently we have done a serum valporate level and found her levels as 160 mg/L.Therapeutic Range is 50-100mg/L.We have done this druglevel 4 hrs after the morning medication as per the neurologist's advice. I am really confused since the drug level is taken after the medication. Please advice me when is the ideal time to do the Blood test to check the drug level. Our neurologist recommended to reduce the valporate dosage since herlevels was 160.Two weeks after tapering the drug valporate we have carried out another blood work up before the morning medication and found the results as 96.4 mg/L. My daugter is getting many seizuresnow.She is having seizures every 4 days and duration of the episodes is 11 minutes.Our neurologist wanted to step up her medication.Since my daughter is heavily medicated i worry whether it helps.She is under following medications. Divalproex Sodium : 500 mgin the morning,500 mg in the night. Keppra : 500 in the morning ,625 mg in the night. Lamictal: 50mg 3 times a day. Neurologist wanted to step up keppra's dosage to 750in the mor and 750 in the night.I would like to know how much is the keppra dosage given for children based on body weight.My daughter weighs 30 kg. Neurologist says the lamictal dosage she has now is less and she needs to take a total of 210mg.She takes now 150 mg.I would like to know the recommended dose of lamictal with use of valporate. Thanks a lot for any suggestions.We are really depressed since we stay in a small town and chances to see another neurologist is difficult.

Comments

Re: Help needed

Submitted by Christine1968 on Sat, 2007-07-14 - 09:08
Hi, Sorry you are going through such a rough time. I can relate to the whole "small town" issue. There are no pediatric neurologists in our county let alone one who specializes in epilepsy. So we've travelled as far as 4 hours away to see an epileptologist. Our son has seen five different doctors since he started having seizures three years ago at age 8. Some we liked and some we didn't so we kept searching until we found someone we like dealing with. It is worth it. In response to your question about when is the best time to check blood levels; our son's doctor always orders it to be done before his morning dosage. Good luck to you and your family and remember you are her advocate...if something doesn't seem right to you, you need to question it and keep questioning it until you have an answer.

Re: Re: Help needed

Submitted by svagre3 on Sat, 2007-07-14 - 17:37
Thanks a lot christine for your reply.

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