Have been taking Tegretol since Monday 2/27. Since Thursday I have been a little slow on the uptake (wife and best bud have suggested I seem confused for a second or two when I am asked things), have been clumsy, sleeping a lot, and feel that my grip is weak when I am trying to pick things up. I also go really faint and weak in the grocery store yesterday. Did not feel I was fit to drive home, so I had my wife drive. Is this normal for the first week of Tegretol?
I have just taken a week off from work for a hospital visit and recovery. Supposed to go back to work tomorrow. Not sure I feel good about driving though.
I felt clumsy the first week on Teg. Especially trying to walk on the tread mill. THAT was a joke!! I slept a lot the whole time I was on Teg. I had to go off after a three months because every time we increased to get more pain relief on the jaw, it caused me to have mre geniculate pain symptoms, i.e. back of throat when swallowing and deep inner ear stabbing pain. Quite horrid, if I do say so myself... Min
Yes, you are not alone in the symptoms you described. for me I also had profound forgetfulness and memory issues. I started having to write multiple places for things I needed to do and even then I still would forget. I would have awful dizzy spells and my thighs had all sorts of bruises because I kept stumbling into my desk or file cabinet at work. I had to schedule when I took the doses; after I knew I was going to drive to work, and with ample time to be able to safely drive home. But I admit that there were many times that I have no recollection of my drive home and it would scare me when I did get home. For me it lasted the entire 6 months that I was taking it and I finally weened myself off because I couldn't stand the side effects. I would rather be in serious pain than not have a clue what I was supposed to be doing or dizzy with slurred speech.
These are fairly typical side effects of Tegretol. In high doses, the med can also play hob with short term memory, word finding, and cognitive reasoning. For authoritative information on drug side effects, I tend to recommend either drugs.com or rxlist.com. Drugs.com also has a good medication interactions checker.
I have not been back to the dr for this exact reason. I know they are going to want to put me on something that will affect my abilities. I have a 1 1/2 hour commute to work (3 hours total) and cannot be impaired, also my work requires concentration and I can't sacrifice that ability. Is there any medication that helps and won't send you off into lala land?
You won't know which meds you can tolerate versus those you can't, until you are tapered up on them, one at a time or in combination. Every patient's sensitivity to meds is individual.
Denying yourself the input and guidance of a physician because you don't want to hear what they have to say is NOT a good idea, Bullitbaby. This pain can and will get worse without treatment. Many people on anti-convulsive medications cannot drive safely and may even have their licenses restricted (in the US). But the alternative for many is unbearable agony. I realize this is bad news, but it's a reality you face with many others.
Amongst all the the anti-convulsives that people use on here, is there one that does the job without causing big side-effects. I have put in a call to my Neuro today regarding Tegretol, and thus have not taken it yet for the morning. As I am on at 11:30am Eastern time US, this means I have missed another day of work. My stomach has been aching for days since I have been home and taking the off-brand Tegretol (Epitol) that my pharmacy gave me. Last night, after eating dinner and then taking my nighttime dose of Tegretol, I got really sick to my stomach and threw up my dinner and my pills. I was so exhausted after that event that I fell into bed and did not take anymore medicine. I had a couple more events of nausea overnight. That said, this morning I feel clear headed, my headache is in its normal spot with no pings or jabs in the occipital region, and I am not stumbling or snoring. My face is burning a bit, but I'll take that over "zombie".
I found no relief on Neurontin, and it made me forgetful and foggy-headed which affected my employment. Tegretol, in the week I have taken it, made me slow-witted, stumbly, faint, weak-handed, and sleep something like 16 hours a day. Any thoughts? It seems I do not do well with anti-convulsants. In the fall I was on Zonegran briefly and kept almost passing out, getting cold, sweaty, and shaky.
I am beginning to think anti-convulsants are not for me. I am trying to stay positive and rational, but I will lose my position on the faculty at my school (even though I have had a stellar record 'til this year's absences) if I keep this up.
Is there anything else out there that works other than anti-convulsants? I know there has not been a ton of research, but there has to be something. I am 34, have paid almost 75 Grand for all my collective degrees, and am worrying about becoming unemployable. There has to be a way around this.
Respectfully,
Fred
Richard A. "Red" Lawhern said:
You won't know which meds you can tolerate versus those you can't, until you are tapered up on them, one at a time or in combination. Every patient's sensitivity to meds is individual.
Denying yourself the input and guidance of a physician because you don't want to hear what they have to say is NOT a good idea, Bullitbaby. This pain can and will get worse without treatment. Many people on anti-convulsive medications cannot drive safely and may even have their licenses restricted (in the US). But the alternative for many is unbearable agony. I realize this is bad news, but it's a reality you face with many others.
Talk with your neurologist, Fred. Nausea is a rather extreme reaction to Tegretol. You could be dealing with an allergic or toxic reaction of some sort. However, Tegretol isn't your only option -- though ALL of the anti-convulsive meds have some degree of side effects. Trileptal is often discussed here on Living With TN as having fewer or less severe side effects. And Neurontin is metabolized outside the liver, also with somewhat fewer side effects than many other meds.
I suggest you visit our Face Pain Info page and read the section on medications, to get an understanding of your spectrum of possible options. But to answer your central question with candor (and hopefully a reasonable kindness), I know of no medications that work for this category of neurological disorder that don't also create significant side effects of some sort. All of the meds impact the entire nervous system in order to deal with a disorder that may affect only one nerve. So far, medical science seems to be years from finding a med that can be targeted only to undo the damage that has been experienced by a single nerve or nerve branch.
I realize it is enormously threatening to consider that a disorder or its treatments might disable you from working -- and perhaps especially so at your age. But it happens frequently enough to be a shared experience for many chronic neurologic pain patients. You shouldn't give up on searching for solutions -- but you should also talk with other members here or local to you, who have struggled with this beaste for years, as you test what works for you as an individual. And you need to be especially leery of practitioners or advocates who claim to have sweeping solutions for nerve pain. In my experience, there ain't no such animal as a perfect answer for TN.
Hey guys- not sure if this is a little late or not, but I hated teg…so much I found that 2 epitol 200mg in the morning and one gabapentin as well. The one gabapentin at lunch and then again- 2 epitol and one gabapentin at bedtime…works pretty well I just feel tired because I have to increase my anxiety medicine as I go…the gabapentin is 300 mg I’m still in pain but that has workd best
Hey guys- not sure if this is a little late or not, but I hated teg…so much I found that 2 epitol 200mg in the morning and one gabapentin as well. The one gabapentin at lunch and then again- 2 epitol and one gabapentin at bedtime…works pretty well I just feel tired because I have to increase my anxiety medicine as I go…the gabapentin is 300 mg I’m still in pain but that has workd best
I am a little late to the discussion to but here are my thoughts. The side effects can be somewhat severe and yours are somewhat typical. Some people do have an allergy to Carbamezapine and I am not sure where the line in the sand is between side effects and allergic reaction so I wasn't surprised that Red was on that same train of thought regarding an allergic reaction.
I have understood that Oxy-Carbamezapine is its cousin, and useful for those who are allergic to the original. Not sure if the side effects are worse or less.