Well, my son is on keppra and trileptal. As for side effects, for him there were none. In the past he had been tried on tegretol, depakote, dilantin, lamictal, gabitrol, and others I don't remember. All of those gave him the worst side effects. What I have found with these aeds is that they seem to effect everyone so differently. For every drug he's ever taken that affected him, I found other people had positive experiences, and vice versa. So I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I had done much research on keppra and the possible side effects didn't scare me near as much as the one with lamictal. But, I know there are many people who have taken lamictal with great success. So, I wouldn't necessarily judge someone else's experience as what could happen to you. I'm a firm believer in having to try different drugs or a combination of them to find what's right for you. If it doesn't work for you, there are so many others to try. I'm glad we kept searching for the right ones for my son. I was about to throw my hands up when his doctor gave him this combination - at a very low dose. He's been seizure free for two years now. I think that some epileptics are over-medicated just to achieve good seizure control, but the patient is often left being a zombie. And sometimes too much medication can actually make the seizures worse - and I have personal experience with that with my son. We finally found a neuro who let my son take a low dose of the keppra & trileptal and evaluated how frequent the seizures were. With therapeutic doses of trileptal, he had many more seizures. With therapeutic does of keppra, he was a monster. But with a low dose of each he achieved the best seizure control with no behavior changes. So, keep an open mind when trying new medications.
