AboutSophia, R.N., M.S. Expertise Almost any questions pertaining to epilepsy, seizures, pseudo-seizures, testing for epilepsy, medications, surgery. Self-care, appropriate emergency measures, medication side-effects, drug interactions etc.
Experience Working as an epilepsy nurse clinican in a large comprehensive epilepsy center for 15 years. Previous employment with a major pharmaceutical company working in pharmaceutical research. Before that - varied experience in nursing.
Question Our daughter Kelly is 17 yrs old. She has Turner syndrome. She also is slow and goes to a private school. A few years ago she started having staring seizures and JME. Kelly tried depakote and gained alot of weight from it. We stopped all drugs for 3 years now. Kelly still has the jerky jumps in the morning and she just tolerates them. Our doctor told us once she starts a medication for seizures she will probably have to take it forever. We are reluctant to start her again on seizure meds. Is it ok not to take anything for JME? also, our doctor wanted to try kelly on zoloft for obsessive compulsive disorder. She is very repetitive. He told us that zoloft can bring out more seizures. Is that true? What do you think we should do as far as treating kelly.
Answer Hi Laura,
As you relate, yes, seizure treatment can be quite frustrating. It is balance between control of seizures versus medication side-effects. As you found out, Depakote causes weight gain. Sometime the weight gain can be quite substantial. There are now new medications for JME that will not cause this side-effect.
You ask if it is ok NOT to treat the JME. This is also not an easy question. If Kelly is functional, the events from JME will cause her to lose some function and she is also at risk for a possible generalized tonic-clonic seizure (grand-mal).
Zoloft does carry a seizure warning in the package insert, but I have treated seizure patients with medications such as Zoloft without an increase in their seizures. The dosage is another balancing act.
If you haven't done so already, bring Kelly for a consult to an "epilepsy center" in your area so that she will get the benefit of medication advice from highly specialized epileptologists and epilepsy nurses.
Please write if you have further questions.
Good luck to you and Kelly.
