Living with Epilepsy/Seizures

This story is about the serious impact to the physical and mental health of my 75 year-old Mother due to changes made to her seizure medicine. My mother was a perfectly healthy, active and totally independent adult prior to the time that changes were made to the medicine she had been on for 65 years. In early 2008, she came down with the flu and stayed with family for a week. During that week, family dispensed her medicine to her which consisted of Phenobarbital and Dilantin for seizures and Prozac for depression She had been on the same seizure medicine for 65 years and the same depression medicine for 25 years. At the end of that week, my Mother had difficulty standing on her own, so we brought her to the emergency room. She was there for 5 days and the diagnosis was that she had toxic levels of dilantin.

Her dilantin was reduced and she went to Rehab center for the next month to gain back strength in her legs and improve partial spans of memory loss that occurred as a result of the toxic levels. She came out of rehab in pretty good physical and mental condition and went to stay with family for continued support. Follow-ups with the neurologist assigned during the hospital stay and a new primary physician were made and at each visit, her medicines were changed.

It started with lowering her Phenobarbital and dilantin dose and introducing keppra, to finally taking her completely off both dilantin and Phenobarbital and solely on keppra for seizures During that same time, she was taken off Prozac and put on a variety of different medicines to replace it including the following (may be others, can’t recall); Effexor, Cymbalta, Lexapro, Zoloft.. Each time she tried one of these, there were some implications and she was either changed to a new depression medicine or other medicines added to ‘help’ with her agitation and anxiety she was experiencing. The additional medicines included Zanax and Clonazepam.

A few months into this, she experienced 2 seizures, which she hadn’t had in over 20 years. Her mood was fine after leaving the Rehab center, but started changing as she was taken off her medicine and changed to all of the ones mentioned. Every time we took her to the doctor and explained the situation, more medicine changes occurred, usually resulting in different, but no better, impacts. A few weeks ago, we took her back to the hospital with symptoms of anxiety and weakness in her legs. During that stay she was given Decadrom for her back and that medicine gave her delusions and acute delirium. That medicine was stopped, and she was started back on a low dose of Prozac, and lowered dose of Clonazepam since that was determined to be a potential cause of some of her problems. She was also started on a low dose of Seroquil at night to help with anxiety She was then sent to Rehab from the hospital 3 days ago.

She has had bouts of acute delirium in Rehab - first time she has ever experienced delusions or delirium was less than 2 weeks ago in the hospital. Last night, she told her family several times she was going to kill herself and due to safety concerns for her, she was placed in the psychiatric unit of the hospital. That is where she is today, and we are waiting for their diagnosis and plans.

This is my story and I need feedback on what to do now to help my poor mother get back her life.