When You’re Scared and Unsure: Trusting the Process Through a Medication Change

So we are going through a rough patch or a bump in the road.

And I wanted to share this with you because I know that you will relate to this.

We recently changed our daughter's seizure medication.

We are in the process of weaning her off of one of her medications and then we'll gradually, or we have started to gradually increase the dosage on another medication that we're just starting.

we've been through this process many many times before but this time is different and i don't like it all of our daughter's anti-seizure meds have some type of sedation effect on the brain and she usually handles it just fine but this time it's kicking her butt She began or we began reducing the current med that she is taking almost two weeks ago.

And that same night, I gave her a lower dose of the new medication.

Within about four to five days of starting the new low dose of the medication, she immediately became heavily fatigued.

And for example, she would fall asleep consistently when we were in the car, while she was watching her favorite TV show.

And then finally, I was informed that she was too tired to complete school tasks throughout the afternoon during her school day.

So I reported this to her doctor through one of the nurses to make sure that this was, in fact, to be expected, even though he did warn me when we had a call in a week or two prior to starting this med that she could experience this.

I always still like to report anything positive.

unique that is happening so that they have a record of how she responds during medication changes.

After talking with the nurse, we decided that it made sense to hold off on increasing the dose of the new med and that I should continue with the same dose for the next week while her body adjusts.

I was relieved that this was an option.

However, they did caution me that if her seizures got really bad, that I should increase the dose of the new medication and continue on with our plan to get her off of and wean her off of the prior medication.

So now at that point, we are at the one-week mark into the medication.

She's doing better, and it was reported that she had a great day.

This was both Thursday and Friday at school.

Her energy improved, and she was more engaged.

Yay! It's finally good news.

Now I get, as her mom, to monitor her over the weekend.

And in my head, I'm hoping that we continue to progress in the right direction.

But then, Saturday night into Sunday morning, I had her sleep next to me through the night because I noticed that as she was falling asleep next to me on the couch...

She was making this almost wheezing noise, like as if she needed to clear her throat or just cough really hard, but she couldn't do it.

And this noise continued through Sunday, so I made the decision to keep her home from school on Monday, and I took her into the pediatrician to be checked.