One of the worst things for me to adjust to with the Topamax has been the problem of what it does to me when I try to do "online" processing tasks like reading or sight-reading music. For some reason, if it's not a piece of literature or music that I'm familiar with, I don't seem to process as fast as I used to. There's a delay or lag that never used to be there.
It's much worse with music than with simple reading, perhaps because of the added step of converting the notes to a motion of the hand. Last Sunday night, during one of the hymns we were doing, the notes on the page simply stopped making sense. They were like a Rorschach test, and I literally couldn't recognize a single note on the page. I started shaking, and it only lasted a few measures, but it seemed like an eternity. I finally found a chord that I recognized and was able to get back into it, but I was shaky the rest of the service.
I stumble a lot more with my reading than I used to as well. I hate that because reading aloud is such a big part of my job, too. I just do the best I can with it and go on, but these two things together have really been profoundly difficult for me to deal with. My doctor tells me that they are just natural functions of my brain chemistry adjusting to the medicine, and that some of the symptoms should go away as time progresses.
In truth, some things have gotten better. Many of those early symptoms of weariness have gone away. I only forget words occasionally. The migraines are certainly better. This one big obstacle remains. I just hope it goes away, too. I can't stand the thought of having to stop playing. It's been a part of my life for 25 years now, and to lose that would be profound.
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And then you said.....