Personally I HATE the Gabapentin, and I don't think it works as well as it should. My doc took me off it because of the brain fog and because of the water retention and the weight I gained because of the water retention.

He put me on Topamax, 200mg twice a day, and it works GREAT! The burning & tingling are GONE completely, there are NO zaps, there is no feeling of "water running down my legs" like there used to be, there's NO symptoms at all!!! In fact I've not had to have my dosage changed in several years! Now I KNOW I still have the nerve problem because I ran out of the Topamax a while back, and without it, I had the burning/tingling, etc., so the problem is still there. This medication is just great! Also, I LOST weight on it -- I lost ALL the water retention weight, plus an additional 10lbs which I needed to lose anyway. LOL And I have NO brain fog at all, and everyone I've talked to who is on it, says they have no brain fog either. So why not ask your doc about putting you on this? I think it's 3 times better than Gabapentin!!! I don't know why they keep using it.

Just thought I'd suggest it. I hope your doc agrees. God bless and take care. Hugs, Lee

My SWAG would be the numbers of people for whom the side effects of Topamax are intolerable. I learned from my experiences with IBD that very often any particular medication/treatment only works for a portion of patients, and since there's no way to tell in advance, we're stuck with being guinea pigs to find out which one(s) will work (best) for each of us.

For some gabapentin works fine. For others like you, gabapentin is horrible, but Lyrica or Topamax may work. For some, like me, none of them work, or the side effects of each/all are intolerable.

It'd be nice if one medication worked well for eveyone without intolerable side effects, but it'd be even nicer if we all had our health, no pain, and were all rich...

Doc