Topamax -- For All You Searchers

I've noticed there have been a lot of hits on my blogs about Topamax, and I've pretty much stopped writing about my experiences with it. I sort of left that story unfinished, and those of you who have started taking it and are looking for some sort of "ending" may be wondering if it ever got any better for me. The simple answer is yes.

I've been on Topamax since October, and although the period of adjustment getting up to the full dosage was just miserable, now that I'm there, most of the worst of the side effects for me are gone. I still have moments of tingling in my fingers and toes, but those are fairly rare for me. I have lingering moments of processing lag, but the huge lags I reported earlier, especially those when trying to play the piano and organ, have either smoothed themselves out or my brain has learned to compensate.

I do still lose words and spellings of words. Names are the worst. That tip-of-the-tongue syndrome happens to me all the time. Sometimes I can get to the information I need in a few minutes, sometimes not. I just tell my students I'm having a Topamax moment, and we go on. It is embarrassing at times, especially when it's a person's name that's lost.

Topamax ultimately helped me to lose about 40 pounds, along with diet changes. As that's something I needed to do, I was grateful to it. The weight is still coming off, but not as rapidly as before.

I have not had a full-on migraine since the middle of December. I was having them every time I got stressed out about something, meaning that when school was in session, I was needing my Maxalt about once a week. To me, that's pretty impressive. It's too soon to tell if this record will hold, but I've already passed through some pretty stressful stuff (see earlier blogs from this week if you don't believe me), and no hammer of the gods, so I think the Topamax has to be doing something right.

Ultimately, the only thing I can tell you about the drug is this: so far, it's been good to me. My side effects were nasty at first, but I didn't have the worst of the range, either. I have a good friend who had to get off of it because her side effects included some of the intolerable others. If you are struggling with the confusion and the slow processing, hang in there. It might get better for you like it did for me.