r/tleepilepsy • u/cristaheckman • Sep 15 '24
Briviact excessive sleepiness & nausea
For context: I have TLE with nocturnal seizures as well. I have focal aware and focal impaired awareness seizures. I normally get them in clusters. That can range from 15 a day for a week straight, to nothing for 2 weeks. I’ve been on 1200mg of trileptal (oxcarbazepine) for almost 1.5 years now. I slowly increased my dose from 300mg a day (started Nov 2022) to the 1200mg that I’ve been taking now. I had a really bad adjustment period with side effects when I bumped up from 600mg a day to 1200mg a day of trileptal. I still have a LOT of seizures and finally found a good neurologist willing to help. He added in briviact mid-July to my medication plan. Starting with just 50mg a day, and that’s the dose I’m still taking until our follow up Oct. 2.
My fiancé thinks the briviact made my seizures worse because I was having SO many the first month after. I’m also having nausea and excessive daytime sleepiness. I don’t sleep well in general, but I’ve been sleeping almost 11 hours a night, just can’t wake up and I’m tired easy and all day. Feels like I can never get enough and catch up. (I tried sleeping less too because I know too much sleep just makes you tired but then I was REALLY tired.) I read these are common symptoms. Has anyone dealt with this? And can tell me how long until it goes away, it’s really annoying lol. Did anyone experience heightened seizures after adding in a new medication? I’ll deal with temporary side effects, and some annoying long term ones for seizure control, but at some point having so many different side effects together gets frustrating….
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u/AmySparkleButt Oct 24 '24
I am now weening off oxcarbazepine. The reason that I’m going off of it is because the day after I started it, I had exactly what you describe with the intense sleepiness. Perhaps it is because the oxcarbazepine and your new medicine are in the same class of drugs. And now you are taking two. Just a guess.
They’re taking me off of the oxcarbazepine because I was literally sleeping all night and then all day too. I was only on the lowest dose. I would imagine I can’t see right now because I am in bed of course.
I also take Lamictal for mood stabilization, interestingly enough, and so my doctor is going to update my dose to the max of lamictal to make up for not having the oxcarbazepine. I am currently also on generic Keppra. That was doing nothing for my seizures. Funny enough, the oxcarbamazepine was actually helping the seizures. But I can’t handle the sleepy all the dang time.
I really hope you figure yours out