Hi folks,

First of all, I want to thank you all in advance for your wealth of personal experience and willingness to share on this amazing board. I feel so alone in my journey and just knowing there are others out there with similar experiences makes it a bit more bearable. Here is my story.

Mid-november I started experiencing throbbing/stabbing pain in my left temple area, that sometimes shoots across my forehead and down into the left side of my face. Because it started about a week after I had a bad cold, my doctor (and me) thought it was a sinus infection (based on a history of allergies etc--it sort of fit my past experiences with them other than the fact I had no congestion etc). Anyway, after 3 rounds of antibiotics and 4 different NSAID prescriptions which did NOTHING for the pain, we realized we weren't dealing with a sinus infection...they thought it might be something called 'temporal arteritis'...that got ruled out. Then referred to neuro. Saw her early Jan...had an enhanced CT, EEG, and am scheduled for an MRI this coming tuesday. In the meantime, she believes I have something called 'atypical TN'...I've read about it and get the general gist.

She started me on a prescription of topamax. I started taking 25 mg a day on January 25th, then my dosage increased to 50 mg a day this past Tuesday, Feb 1....wed seemed fine but life has been a torturous hell pretty much since then. Extreme dizzy spells, feel 'off', tingles etc...all of which i expected. The good news--for the first time in about 9 weeks, the severe head pain is actually gone for most of the day until it's close to dose time again.

So here's my question--has anyone else here taken this drug for this? and what has your experience been? Have you stuck out the side effects? Basically I know they are bad....but I am willing to deal with them as long as they eventually go away and the med keeps the pain away. I've heard they will subside once my body adjusts, it's just during the titration period etc.

Can anyone share? And again, thanks in advance...please post as much detail as possible about your experience...hearing other people's agony during topamax hell is somehow comforting to me!