Challenges

Adding Lexapro to Lisbeth's meds has not softened the side effects of the Keppra as we'd hoped, so we decided to further reduce the Keppra. There is a liquid form of the medication that can be doled out in lower doses, and last Wednesday Lisbeth's staff at her home started her on a newly prescribed 250 mg a day. We thought we'd see an improvement in Lisbeth's behavior with this latest reduction, but instead, she got worse - she was sleeping for hours at a time during the day, and when she was awake, she was still having the perseverative dark thoughts and anxiety. Lisbeth slept over our house on Christmas Eve. That's when we noticed that a grave mistake had been made - the Keppra label read that Lisbeth was to receive 2500 mg a day, rather than 250!! We were sickened to realize that Lisbeth had been getting this monster dose for the previous 4 days!!! ARGH. Evidently someone at her neurologist's office put the decimal point in the wrong place. We did not give Lisbeth the Keppra that night, and got things straightened around with the on-call doctor yesterday. Lisbeth was doing well yesterday morning (thank goodness these drugs do not have a long half life) and resumed the low dose today. We'll see if it works. There's always something. Moral of the story, double check, triple check, all medication labels. Mistakes get made.

Plus and Take Away

Lisbeth and our cat Jasper (who takes over as guardian angel cat when Lis visits us...)

Plus and take away, a favorite old Lis-ism, perfectly describes what's been going on with Lisbeth's meds of late. Lis has been experiencing tough symptoms since starting on Keppra this summer. Keppra does a fantastic job inhibiting big seizure activity, but the neurological symptoms that slip through the dam are rage, insomnia, loss of appetite, dark perseverative thoughts such as, I am getting dead, body all broken, need to go to church for the dead party (funeral) and light the candles), hallucinations, and pain. We reduced the Keppra to the lowest dose, thinking that this would alleviate some of these symptoms, but no, even on 500 mg a day, this is what we're seeing. Last week we started Lisbeth on Lexapro - she has been off the Cymbalta since July, and hasn't had an anti-depressant on board since then. We are hoping that the Lexapro can buffer some of these disturbances, because if we have to take Lisbeth off Keppra, we have no other anti-epileptic to try. We've reached the end of the med road, we've tried them all, and they all have crap side affects. Choose your poison. Keppra at least does the job of inhibiting seizures - she's only having 3 or 4 grand mals a month now. No other med has worked this well. But the trade off may just be too much. This is SO HARD for Lisbeth, and extremely frustrating for us. Bah, humbug.

Meanwhile, we have lots of wonderful holiday items in the Etsy shop. Lisbeth's big sister Kaitlyn and brother-in-law Cory graciously modeled some of the new mandala tees for us last week, and the weather cooperated with a sweet dusting of snow.

So come on over and browse around - there's still time to pick up some last minute gifts from Brainstorm Studio! Let us know in the comments on checking out that you came by way of this blog, and we'll include a beautiful mandala art card with your purchase! Happy Holidays!