Meant to add this a while ago and just now thinking about it WHILE I'm on the Internets.
People who are on Keppra or other anti-seizure meds: do not accept generic from the pharmacy unless it's been approved by your doctor!
I've been on Keppra (brand-name) for over a year now, and I noticed at my last refill that I was automatically given generic meds (Levetiracetam) instead of my usual little orange pills--I had not asked for generic, but we'd switched insurance providers at work and I thought this was perhaps what they'd approved. Figured I'd give it a go to see if it's worth the $20 savings--I had a follow up with my neurologist in just over a month and I'd check with them then.
The interesting thing about me being on seizure meds is that I don't take them for seizures as one may suppose--I'm not an epileptic, but a portion of my brain IS. When that particular portion of my brain is seizing (which is nearly all the time), I have trouble recalling information at best . . . at worst if I'm physiologically stressed (like hit with a dizzy spell from low blood sugar/pressure) the seizures can escape into other parts of my brain like a firestorm and I can be thrown into a full-out body seizure. Basically, though, I think of my anti-seizure drugs as 'memory pills' or 'head meds'.
Anywho, 4 days after starting these generic head meds I noticed I started having trouble recalling when something occured in recent time. A conversation I had that morning was referenced as having taken place "yesterday". A "few days ago" was actually "last month". I was no longer able to recall specific, or near-specific conversation details and had to fall back to my old habits of describing something said in the past in terms of general meaning and contextual cues.
So here I was with generic meds that didn't seem to be working all that well. Being a natural curiosity seeker/scientist type, I took it one step further and stopped the head meds for a week just to see if there really was a difference being on them vs. not taking them at all. Without going into detail, yes there was. So, the generic seemed to be working, but not as effectively as the brand.
Generic medications usually contain identical ingredients as brand-name, but by law they are required to be formulaically different so long as the brand-name is on the market. For things like cholesterol or blood-pressure medications the body sees no difference, but seizure meds are specific to brain function and even a slight change in medication can have widely different effects. I checked in with my doctor and learned that anti-seizure meds should never be substituted for brand-name; in my case, and for most folks on seizure meds, the gap between 80% effective (generic) and 100% effective (brand) is so large it's closer to being on NO medication at all.
Pay attention to your prescriptions, and if you're on head meds too make sure to ask about or inform your doctor if you're taking generic.
For me, at least, it's worth the extra $20 a month to be "normal."
No comments:
Post a Comment