My New Lovah, Mr T... Strong & Scary but Without the Gold Chains

It's 3 a.m....

It's 3 a.m. and I'm up.

AGAIN.

Like I was last night.

And the night before that!

This new Topamax I'm taking has a ton of different side effects. For some people it makes them fall on their face exhausted all the time. Like they're sleep walking through their days. For others, it wires them and makes them wide awake. ALL THE TIME. I seem to have fallen into this second category.

I thought it would be good to keep tabs of this journey with my new lover Mr T, not only for my benefit, and the benefit of my new doctor who will need all the gory and boring details, but also because I'm finding there's a ton of information online about this drug. Most of it is EXTREMELY SCARY and horrific, little of it is very helpful and personal. So I figured maybe someone else can benefit by reading about this. If not, go read someone else's blog would ya? lol

No, I'm kidding.

STAY!

Seriously! Stay. It was a joke.

Let me begin first with a disclaimer...

***I am not a doctor. This blog is in no way meant to be used as medical advice. Always, always, always consult your own physician about your own use of this medication and my story here is just that, my own story and experience. Do not use my story as a basis or direction for your own medical use of Topamax. There are many different reasons why patients can be prescribed this medication and because of that, there are also many different dosages and instructions you can be given to follow based on your own personal medical history. If you have questions on your dosage and side effects, please speak to your own physician.***

There, I feel better. Now back to my entry...

So, if you haven't read previous entries, I am taking Mr T to hopefully help with migraines, chronic headaches and chronic pain from my fibromyalgia. My new doctor, bless her heart, thinks it may help me and I'm crossing my fingers and toes in that same vain.

My instructions are as follows:

For week 1 I am supposed to take 25 mg at bedtime.
Week 2, 25 mg in the morning and again at bedtime.
Week 3, 25 mg in the morning and 50 mg at bedtime.
Week 4, 50 mg in the morning and again at bedtime.

Day 1, which was Thursday night, I took the first 25 mg pill 5 minutes after the pharmacy handed my prescription to me. I had 3 seizures when I was pregnant with B and when I was in the hospital being evaluated to see why I was having seizures out of nowhere, since I'd never had one before, they shot me up with 2 different anti seizure medications that I ended up being allergic to. I was supposed to take Mr T at bedtime but because of my past history with anti seizure meds, I was afraid of having a huge allergic reaction to it and, oh I don't know, suffocating in my sleep or something. So that's why I took it right away, while I was still lucid and aware of everything.

Within about 35 minutes I had a horrible coppery, metallic taste rush into my mouth. I think I mentioned it in my last post. It was like I put a whole bunch of pennies in my mouth to suck on. The Coke I had been drinking started tasting like metal and was very tingly on my tongue, almost painful actually. I had to make cookies for a potluck at work the next day and Mr Man said I was acting very goofy and wired and energetic. (He kept calling me "Mrs Topamax" which I found hysterical for some reason. I must have been high lol)

I was in a really good mood, laughing and joking with him and B but my brain was kind of skipping beats here and there. I had to read the recipe about 20 times because I couldn't focus on it and what ingredients I had already put in the bowl. I needed to find the pastry blender that
Mr Man had put away when he cleaned the kitchen the last time I used it. It wasn't in the drawer I keep all my baking supplies in and for the life of me I could not think of the name of the damn thing.

Now, forgetting the names of items is not something new for me. I have fibro. It's an everyday occurrence and Mr Man is used to it but this was different. With fibro it's usually a complete blank. I can't think of what the thing is AT ALL. It's like someone takes an eraser and just wiped out that little memory card that's filed away in my brain that holds that item. Then later on, it comes back. This was different in that it was on the tip of my tongue. I kept trying to explain it to Mr Man over and over and over again. I was miming it with my hand, trying to make the shape of it. Telling him you make pie crusts with it and it smooshes the flour and the butter or shortening together until it looks like peas. Unfortunately, I think I even tried calling it that "knuckle looking thing!" What the hell is that all about? How do you get knuckle when talking about the pastry blender? It was pretty comical. Mr Man just kept laughing at me even though I was getting frustrated.

I had no problems falling asleep that night but I was awake by 3am. I woke up with RLS (Restless Legs) and got up to take some Mirapex I'm prescribed for it. By the time I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen for water, the restless, jittery feeling had spread from head to toe. I took the Mirapex still, hoping for some relief. I started shaking with really, really bad chills. If you know me at all, you know that I am ALWAYS hot. I live in Utah which is nipply cold in the winter. I could be outdoors, in shorts and flip flops, in the middle of January and still be wishing for a breeze of some kind. So, I knew something was wrong if I was freezing. I couldn't hold still, I was shaking and jittery and felt like I needed to jump out of my skin. I paced the house for about 2 hours before snuggling up to Mr Man again for the warmth and falling asleep for half an hour. Then I was up again, wired and jittery and wide awake again. BUT....

For the first time in 17 YEARS, I WAS HEADACHE FREE!!!!!!! It was funny because I remember standing there talking to Mr Man as he was walking out the door to leave for work, about how awful my boss had been about some comment he'd made a couple of days before, when it dawned on me why I was so happy! I didn't have a headache! It's been so long since I haven't had one that I couldn't even remember what that was like. It was wonderful.

He had made me toast and poured me coffee before he left for work as he always does in the morning, because he's so sweet and he knows how rough mornings always are for me. I had zero appetite. The site of the toast and just the thought of eating it actually made me want to gag a little. I think I drank about half the coffee, which thankfully tasted like it normally does. But then he left for work and I sat on the couch to relax for a minute. And I felt like someone had just pulled the plug on my happy mood. It was very odd. One minute I was fine and the next minute, I was very melancholy and sad and depressed. I almost felt flat, if there's even such a way to feel flat. I can't explain it very well but it kind of scared me a little. Then just like that, it was gone.

Now, I also started my period at this same time which could be why I might have been having the elated feelings and the feelings of flatness and melancholy although I will say that I am not a big PMS kind of person. With my period I am emotional in that I cry at commercials and songs and stories but I never get depressed feelings or feelings of elation like I did that morning. Maybe it was Mr T, maybe not, maybe Mr T just intensified that? I dunno.

I remained headache free until around 11:30 am Friday morning, which is actually about the same time I seemed to get my appetite back too. That's probably when Mr T left my body from the previous nights dose. I had lunch but couldn't eat much of anything. It all tasted the same but still couldn't have anything with carbonation. Still tasted like fizzy metal. I drank a lot of water all day Friday so I didn't notice any tingling feelings at all.

Day 2, Friday night, I took the dose at bedtime and had the same coppery taste in my mouth. I didn't have the same elated, happy feeling as before. The only memorable thing that happened really was that I tripped going up the stairs! Twice. On the same trip. Actually, on the same step. I know this med can affect coordination which is the only reason I'm mentioning it. Jittery/restless feeling was only in my legs. Started having tingling in my hands and feet but as I drank more water, that went away.

I was not headache free today (Saturday) though. I had a horrible pounding headache which could have been from the lack of sleep from the night before. I had fallen asleep snuggling with B putting him to bed. Woke up at midnight and was awake until I think 3:30 am when I was finally able to fall asleep, and then was up by 9 am because of the dog and cat wanting attention. Did not have much appetite at all. Went out to breakfast with my sister and the kids and had about 6 bites of my food. Ate 3 chicken strips for lunch and that was it. Tried drinking lots today though to keep other side effects at bay.

Today, Day 3, Saturday, I thought I would outsmart Mr T a bit and take half the 25 mg dose around 3:00 pm to see if that would help a little with the sleeplessness. Unfortunately, it did not! (As you can tell since it was 3 AM when I started this post and it's now 5 am!!!) After I took half the dose, I had no appetite. I did have tingling, which I've read is my body letting me know I need hydration since Mr T does dehydrate your body very quickly. So as long as I was drinking water or Powerade, that stayed at bay.

I took the 2nd half of my 25 mg dose around 7:30 tonight I think. Because I'm not hungry in the least little bit, I forgot about making dinner. I was promptly reminded though by my hungry family. When they started giving me fish eye and drooling, I decided to make dinner. I made it through cooking the chicken just fine but when I went to drain the pasta, I dropped the pot of pasta, complete with the boiling water as I was trying to drain it. Splashing boiling water all over my hands. Now, not only did I do it once, but as soon as I tried to lift the pan up again to finish draining it, I dropped it a second time! That is when I hollered for Mr Man to come finish the job since I had burned both hands really bad. I'm ok now but they were bright red tonight.

Other then that clumsy act, I have extremely bad heartburn and I'm kind of nauseated. I also have this weird feeling like there's something stuck in the pit of my stomach. Like a knot or something. You know that feeling you get when you're really nervous or really stressed and you have this feeling down deep in your stomach? That's what it feels like all the time now. But I'm thinking it has more to do with Mr T then with any of my life's stresses right now. I don't know. Also, I'm still extremely emotional, crying at EVERYTHING! Today I cried at about 7 different commercials on TV, cried at a story a friend told me, cried at a blog I read and cried at a song I heard. Which is a lot more then I normally cry around this time!

I think that might be it for the wrap up of days 1-3 of Mr T. I'll try to keep this updated daily with more information on how this is going. I've noticed a lot more hits to my blog now that I'm talking about Mr T and Topamax. Hopefully this will be helpful and beneficial to some of you. Please feel free to leave me comments! I welcome them!