… not to take topiramate this evening, not that it will require much effort. Today is the first day when I am “allowed” not to take a dose since I began the course. The dosage which I have been using to try and head off migraine has been pretty small – tiny, even -compared with what is prescribed for the control of epilepsy, and I can persuade myself that I am simply over-sensitive and churlish in my complainings. Were I to suffer epilepsy then I might well be very glad of any control which the drug might offer me: but I don’t. It has not brought me complete relief from migraine, though I have not had a migraine with aura. The list of side-effects would not make pretty reading – Frances perhaps summed it up best by saying that it had ‘made me old before my time’ – a pretty damning accusation, I felt.
So today will be my first ‘free’ day since the 18th of October. Another small dose tomorrow, yes, but the mean level in my system will creep downwards during the coming week until I can stop altogether. I am not blind to the near-obsession which this drug has become – absurdly, perversely, not with the need to ‘use’ it, but with the desire to be rid of it!
Perhaps, a week from now, I shall have better things to write about. For now, forgive me gentle reader, for my mind has been clogged with topiramate. And I hereby solemnly vow that any future medication offered to me will be very strictly considered before I agree to start a course, believe me.
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