I normally take one for about 6 months, I see my consultant / epilepsy nurse every 3 months, so far we have found nothing that's worked, they say most people would have given up by now but I am prepared to try any if there's a chance one will work,

my neurologist and I made the decision about my meds now we finally found a combination that works I have had the brain surgery also 3 years ago no seizures since. I am on Zonegran and mysoline

My first med was Keppra. It made me VERY depressed. When my mood didn't improve after 3-4 mos, my Doc wanted to switch things up. I wouldn't agree to a change because all of the meds have horrible side effects. But I had a break through seizure and he insisted that I start a switch. With the new med, Lamictal, I'm also having horrible side effects, and the doc again suggested that I consider an alternate drug. But I guess I'm stubborn. I've struggled through so much to get (almost) up to the dose he wants me at that I'm not willing to let it go and start all over again with battling side effects of yet another drug. It's really tough to know what to do.

If your Dr. Ups you dosage on your meds and you Start to notice, that nothing has changed, than you'd know that you need to try something different. Your body will start tolerating it after being on it for so long.

We've tried many different meds and med combinations over 10 years and I could usually tell by 3 months if they were effective at all or not but each individual is different. Some caused such bad side effects that we'd wean my son off of them sooner. I keep very detailed notes on a calendar so I can always go back and compare but even then, with epilepsy being so un-predictable it can be hard to figure out the effectiveness of a new med. So many times Aaron would start a new drug then go 2 or 3 weeks w/o a seizure and we'd get our hopes up and then he'd have 3 days of cluster seizures and we'd be back to square one. Epilepsy is a constant guessing game and a really crappy roller coaster ride sometimes...