Pills

Dear Caida,

Unfortunately, because of your seizures, you take a LOT of medicine.  You do this pretty well, considering your age--you swallow pills larger than I can, usually!  Not only does epilepsy, or cortical dysplasia as they diagnosed you with in March, require medication, but your body is particularly resistant to drugs.  So in a desperate attempt to keep you seizure-free, they keep trying new medicines and upping the dosages of what you have.  Just this last week you got more pills and a new medication added to the list...I thought you might want to know what medicines you have to take--you never know when you'll need that info!

Current medications:
Carbamazepine ER (200 mg capsules, yellow)
Divalproex Sod (125 mg capsules, blue/grey)
Levocarnitine (330 mg tablets, white)

Morning: 2 white, 1 yellow, 4 blue/grey pills
Night: 2 white, 2 yellow, 4 blue/grey pills

Yup, that's right--15 pills a day!  Yikes!  I SOOOOOO hope that someday you will find the magical medicine, or even better that they will find a cure or you will grow out of your seizures like your mom or a surgery will make everything better so you never have to take medicine again!  You talk about how you don't like the medicine, but you're a trooper and you take all of it, every day, anyway.  You don't even need food--which makes you better at that than me!

I sure love you, kiddo.  Lots and lots and lots.  I hope you're always so brave.  And I hope that, like these pills, you always have such a "can-do-it"ness about the necessary things in life that keep us healthy and happy.

Love,
Aunt Celeste