I've recently experienced an increase in migraines. I've suffered with them since I was about ten. I love how we always say suffer. Like anyone enjoys them. Anyhow, I went from having two a year to having about four in five month period. Recently, I had a three day one that had a wonderful slurred speech tag along. Apparently, this is not a good thing. While my coworkers found this quite amusing my doctor did not. Actually, he did snicker a bit. Since he's my cousin this was completely appropriate. He decided that since I also have a history of aura migraines and several occasions of my left side going numb that it was time to try daily treatment. His drug of choice for my daily treatment was Topamax. Now let me just add this disclaimer. What is said in this post is what I experienced personally. My father is on the same medication and has been for several years and has not experienced any of these symptoms. Therefore, I am in no way try to hold the makers of this drug responsible for what I experienced. This post is all about how weird I am.
After just a day or two of taking this new medication (which by the way has a side effect of weight loss BIG PLUS, right?) carbonated beverages began to taste vinegary and like dirty socks. Actually they kind of burned my throat when I drank them. My mouth also started getting dry a lot and I had that fuzzy tongue feeling. I could deal with this. I mean, I figured this was just in my head or a sinus thing. I mean, I always have some kind of sinus drainage. After the second week I noticed I started forgetting words. I knew that there was a word for what I was thinking about but I couldn't find the word. I would try to say words and they'd come out jumbled and jibberish. Much like a baby trying to learn to talk. Again, my coworkers have had a ball with this.
Week three and I went to work and couldn't find the print button on Internet Explorer (Granted I do not use IE regularly but still I'm a geek I should have known). I stared at the screen for two minutes before the office ditz pointed it out to me. Thus began my journey into the realm of stupidity. Yes, I said stupidity. Turns out there's a couple of rare side effects with this medication. Since I'm such a unique person of course I had to get these rare side effects...at least a few of them...the most annoying ones.
The first one I notices was the dry mouth and then the bad taste of carbonated beverages. Next was the loss of words. I love words. Words are one of my favorite things on earth. I've lost them the past few days and I'm not to happy about that. I've had trouble concentrating on simple tasks. Then the babbling talk started. I can't take it anymore. I've turned into a moron. Worse than that, I've turned into an average memory person. The one thing that makes me exceptional at my job is that I can remember where everyone is located, what they do, their extension, yada yada yada yada...today I couldn't remember someone's last name. All I could see in my minds eye was a tumble weed blow throw my head. Not cool.
So I'm stopping this crazy whacked out medication. Yes, I'm calling my doctor and getting his advice but this was a trial period for this to begin with. I hadn't even worked up to the amount he wanted me on so I feel that I'm safe to stop this nonsense. I will, however, call to be advised how to do this safely for my health. This experience has taught me I really don't want Alzheimer's or Dementia. I think I'm going to have to run that 5k with my son next year to raise money for research. This has been a terrible experience. I don't like being slow. I don't like having sock mouth. This has been a scary and stupid feeling experience. I don't like not remember simple things like words. I want to write and if I can't remember the words to write the things that are in my head there's just no reason for me to breath. Ok maybe that's a little overly dramatic but hey, I'm a girl! I'm allowed to be a drama queen every now and then. I love words and I love being a live. Living and writing are two things the just kind of go hand in hand.
Something as simple as a teeny, tiny little pill can change your whole way of thinking literally scares the crap out of me. I think I'm going to really have to start asking better questions before I say yes to any kind of altering chemicals. So now I'll wait for this stupifying medication to work it's way out of system and regain my knowledge and my smarts. I want to get back to my crazy ol' self. That's enough wackiness without being a stupid on top of that. Wish me luck! Lord knows I'll need it!
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