How Do You Deal With The Sleepiness From Medication?
I have Petit Mal seizures. I’m 26. This is most common in children but it stuck with me. I take two medications. Keppra 2000 mg twice a day. Vimpat 150 mg twice a day.
@A MyEpilepsyTeam Member , In mid 2019 I took Keppra for 2 months & it made me so tired that I had to take a nap every day & eventually I started having trouble sleeping at night & so I got off it. If you’re not comfortable with the side effects of your medication, I’d suggest talking to your doctor if you want & maybe they could change your meds or something. But Keppra just made me so tired. When I began seeing my current Neurologist in November 2019, she started me on Vimpat after doing a 5 day in hospital video EEG. At the time a generic Vimpat wasn’t available & I applied for the Patient Assistance Program through Vimpat’s manufacture, UCB, I think is the manufacture. I was approved for the Patient Assistance Program & got my Vimpat for free but I’m sure everyone is looked at differently, like with their financial availability probably & I didn’t have any insurance. Then I soon contacted my local Epilepsy Foundation for help & they put me on one of their programs that only cost me $25 dollars a year & included my meds, blood work & check-ups with their Neurologist & luckily my Neurologist volunteers with my local Epilepsy Foundation & so I got to keep the same doctor but had to go through my local Epilepsy Foundation to leave the Neurologist a message. But Keppra is known to cause excessive drowsiness. In the morning I take 1 Vimpat 100mg & Depakote 750mg & at night I take 1 Vimpat 150mg & 1 Depakote 500mg. In the past I’ve had issues with the Vimpat making my fingers shake after it was increased & so dosage when back down but after January 2023 seizure she increased it at night by 50mg & things have been ok pretty much since. Vimpat has a generic now. The tiny balance issues I have once in a while that @A MyEpilepsyTeam Member mentioned must be due to that. But anyways, if you’re not comfortable with the side effects of the drowsiness, talk to your doctor to try & find something that won’t make you so tired. Good luck. Your friend in Texas, Becky
Thank you both. I did talk to with me them and I’m staying on it for now but they want to to test me on a new medication and see how it works.
Hello! With insomnia, I stop my commitments if possible and try to be at home and finish my sleep, whatever it costs me. Because I found that one of the causes of my seizures is insomnia.
For me this is hard to handle. I’ve tried so many different medications and all of them make me tired. What I do is if I know I’m gonna be doing a lot one day I try and make time for mini breaks so that my body can relax a bit but I suggest not taking naps unless you absolutely have to because they’re probably only gonna make u feel worse
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