2010: My year for The Migraine Problem: Now Topamax

I started Topamax about 1 1/2 week ago. (25mg 1x a day) I can't drink enough water, I mean my mouth is always dry, no matter what. Seems I am getting about 24 glasses of water a day and I feel dehydrated. I was supposed to up my dosage to 2x a day after a week, and I did that for ONE day. That was one bad day, so I immediately cut back to one a day and I'm still trying to stabilize. My neck feels weird to say the least, it's just something I can't describe. I can't feel my right cheek and most of my chin at all (that's happened before, started with a four day migraine many years ago, it comes and goes, just makes it hard to talk and eat at times.) I am having a bit of disorientation, but not the bad stuff I've read about, just have to think more at times. I've had other symptoms, just not headline news, like upset stomach, things taste bad. If it helps with the migraines I'll live with it.

January 19 marked 33 days without ANY pain killers!!!! I still can't believe I did it! I went through six severe migraines without any pain killers in 33 days, and that was a mild month! (the barometric pressure was fairly stable!).

Now I have cyclonenzaprine for pain, although I cant tell it does much but make me tingle a bit all over. It's more distracting than anything, but distraction is good. (I can't have codine, so that rules out alot of pills!)

My neurologist had talked about a nose spray for abortive therapy. I didn't catch the name of it, and we decided to wait before starting that to see how the topamax does. After the cyclonenzaprine, I'm more tempted to ask for it.

My doctor said if the topamax didn't cut the mustard there was another product we could try. If that one has more severe side effects than this one (I would assume we would go in that order) then I'm for stopping here.

Oh, I'm still taking the Verapamil (Calan) 240 that my neurologist put me on when I was 15.

I'll stop babbling now.

Perhaps if you break the topamax tablet in 1/2 and take the halves twice a day it will be more tolerable. That is what I did when I started taking topamax.
Congratulations on your month without painkillers. I hope that it helps. Keep us posted.

I would guess half the people on here that tried topamax could not tolerate the side effects. And then half again recieved no help from it.

There will be some things that wont work at all. I take clonodine 3 x day. sometimes i fall asleep like you see babies do. I dont find it

funny. The whole deal sucks. Hope you find some relief soon.

lentils wrote:Perhaps if you break the topamax tablet in 1/2 and take the halves twice a day it will be more tolerable. That is what I did when I started taking topamax.
Congratulations on your month without painkillers. I hope that it helps. Keep us posted.

Maybe it's because I am taking the generic, but I couldn't imagine cutting these in half. I can barely see these tiny pills as it is! I could see cutting down one and ignoring the dust and taking something less than a whole one, but 'half?' wow.

My doctor said that a month without painkillers gives us a clean slate, I told her it was a waist of time; but to get her help I was willing to do anything! So now we have a clean slate.

33 days with no relief is tough to do. I feel for you. Now that you are pain killer free, what is the plan? Just hope the Topomax works? Or will he let you have trip tans or another pain killer?

Some may disagree with me, but Topamax is just bad stuff! I tried it 3 times! No more for me.

I was so disoriented, my fingers and toes were going numb, and believe it or not, it gave me a headache all the time...

Hope for the best for you, but pay attention to any changes you feel. It's not worth it.

riversidekid wrote:
January 19 marked 33 days without ANY pain killers!!!! I still can't believe I did it!

I just want to say that this is an amazing feat! You deserve congratulations.

I am going to try a detox soon, since the preventatives don't work when you have MOH.

rileyoday wrote:I would guess half the people on here that tried topamax could not tolerate the side effects. And then half again recieved no help from it.

There will be some things that wont work at all. I take clonodine 3 x day. sometimes i fall asleep like you see babies do. I dont find it

funny. The whole deal sucks. Hope you find some relief soon.

Add me to the list of those that have tried it and could not tolerate the side effects! I didn't even get the really bad stuff, but after being on it for over two weeks I just wasn't functional any longer. Three days after I stopped I felt as though I hadn't seen my family in weeks, like I'd been in a "fog".

<I'm starting to feel like a lab rat.>

Congrats on not taking pain killers! I for one have never liked taking pain killers for migraines, all they do is make me silly. Silly with a headache...

I once had one of my quarterly trips to the ER (before Imitrex in shot form was available with prescription) to get a shot of Imitrex but the ER I went to didn't have any! The Dr. gave me a shot of morphine in each butt cheek. I was out of my mind High. I still had a migraine though..It was the weirdest thing to be flying like a kite but in soo much pain. After this episode I swore off pain killers and stuck to the meds that are specifically for migraines. I cannot say enough good things about Imitrex, it saves the day on many occasion. I know it doesn't work for everyone suffering from this illness but I wish it did. It breaks my heart to be on this site and seeing so many people suffer.

Topomax is commonly refered to as 'Dope'omax.

I always had trouble trying to remember words and always feeling a bit vague.

That really didn't bother me too much, since it helped with the migraines.
At least it didn't give me nausea. I hate feeling sick all the time.

Bonnie-Jean wrote:Topomax is commonly refered to as 'Dope'omax.

I always had trouble trying to remember words and always feeling a bit vague.

That really didn't bother me too much, since it helped with the migraines.
At least it didn't give me nausea. I hate feeling sick all the time.

I was willing to live with the "dopey" feeling, but after two and a half weeks on the topamax I had a severe migraine the next time the barometric pressure fell suddenly. If it's not going to even deter migraines in the least then the dopey feeling (along with the other 12 side effects I wrote down just wasn't worth it.)

Was the nasal spray called Stadol by any chance?