Anti seizure medications

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone for contributing to this amazing blog as always. Sorry I have been quiet for a while.

A quick update on Mum. She has been doing a cocktail with mainly natural supplements, Cbd oil and some repurposed drugs including Celebrex, Metformin and Mebendazole (Cimetadine on hold whilst she comes off Phenytoin). She has also been having treatment at the IOZK in Cologne. She completed 4 cycles of Temodar out of the standard regime in the UK of 6. She could not get onto her 5th round as her neutrophils have remained too low. She had her first Dendritic cell vaccine a few weeks ago after completing 6 cycles of Newcastle Disease virus and localised hyperthermia (which are given once a month and are planned out to time with the patients chemo rounds). They were not concerned that she was unable to complete chemo -it did not affect their treatment. The dendritic cell vaccine used Mums tumour tissue from her last operation in December and was cultured over 7 days immediately prior to the vaccine. They were able to produce 3.5million dendritic cells which they were happy with as a good vaccine contains 1 million apparently (not sure who counted them! :) .. )

Her scans have shown a tiny 6mm fleck that appeared in April but has remained unchanged since.

Her speech, reading and writing has been affected and her vision/balance slightly but she is doing really well right now in general.

Last week she had a series of partial seizures. Most of them occurred during the night and they did not last for too long but Dad took her to A & E for the first 3 of them. They got milder during the week and her last one was a week ago on Friday morning. Mum has been coming off Phenytoin which she was put on about 3 months ago when she had her last seizure. Not sure why they gave her that as it interacts with Cimetadine and has much worse side effects but for some reason it takes ages to come off safely. She is nearly completely off it and they have increased her Keppra to 1250mg twice a day. This seems a lot to me especially as her seizures have been fairly mild.

My question to the group is which anti seizure medication are you or your loved ones taking and what dosage?

I believe Keppra is the best in terms of less side effects but at that high a dosage perhaps it will cause some problems for Mum. I would like her to increase the dosage of Cbd oil too as this has anti seizure properties and she has been on a fairly consistent average dose for a while now.

Are there any other anti seizure medications that people are taking other than Keppra and has anyone been on a high dosage of this for a long period of time? If so, how have you/they found it?

Thanks all and warm wishes to everyone.

Alison