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Carbatrol & Lamictal
Thu, 08/10/2006 - 15:23Topic: Parents & Caregivers
I'm looking for information for my 10 year old son. He has recently added a new medication to help control his partial seizures. He is now taking 300 mg Carbatrol and 100 mg Lamictal twice per day. He has been EXTREMELY irritable and aggressive since starting the Carbatrol. I contacted the Dr. earlier, but haven't heard back yet. Just wanted to know if there were others out there experiencing anything similar. I've been doing lots of reading about side effects and have basically found lots of conflicting information. Would appreciate any information anyone may have.
Thanks!
Comments
Re: Carbatrol & Lamictal
Submitted by sraygen5 on Tue, 2007-07-10 - 23:32
I just joined and was looking for information about Carbatrol and found your entry. We were having similar problems with our 7 yr old daughter. She began having seizures as an infant and "out-grew" them around age 2. To our surprise xmas morning at 6 yrs old she had 2 and was started on Carbatrol. Right away we notice her mood change. She became very crabby and super sensitive. We talked to her neurologist and he added 25mg of B-6 to her daily meds and it has made a HUGE difference. She is a happy and seemingly well-balanced hormonally child. I hope this works and look forward to being a member on this site.
Re: Re: Carbatrol & Lamictal
Submitted by Christine1968 on Sat, 2007-07-14 - 08:55
Thanks...I'm going to give that a try. His moods have been better for the past several months...since his body had a chance to adjust to the medication. He is still not totally back to normal though. I have to keep in mind that he is 11 and will be starting middle school in the fall so some of it could be pre-puberty stuff. We give him fish oil for the omega-3 fats along with his medication and have noticed a significant reduction in his seizure activity. Not really sure if it is the Carbatrol/lamictal or the fish oil that is helping more since we started it all right around the same time. This has been a great site for me. It really helps to know there are other out there who can relate. How have you found the Carbatrol to be for her seizure control?
Re: Re: Carbatrol & Lamictal
Submitted by Christine1968 on Tue, 2006-10-17 - 14:25
I just wanted to thank everyone who responded. I appreciate your help. This is still an issue we are struggling with. The doctors don't really want to say that it is related to the medications. Now that I have had more time to deal with it since my original post, I believe that it is a combination of the medications, dealing with the fact that he has epilepsy and his age. He had his first seizure (that we know of) in March of 2004. We started him on Trileptal in Sept. 04. He maxed out the dosage on it and it still wasn't giving him good control so he started on Lamictal in July 05. After about a year on it without good control, we took him to a pediatric epileptologist (he was seeing a pediatric neurologist) and he started him on the Carbatrol/Lamictal combination. That was in August of this year. While he was adjusting to the medication changes, he was having seizures several times a week. Now he hasn't had one since early Sept. Anyways, I just wanted to thank you for your responses. Hope everyone out there is having a good day.