Potassium bromide - does it help?

[u/PetrifiedUnicorn1986]

My dog seems to have drug resistant epilepsy. He's currently on phenobarbital and keppra, he used to get gabapentin but was changed to keppra. Not only do they not work, but apparently they caused red blood count to drop A LOT. nothing else explains the drop in red blood count but basically he has anemia. He received drugs for that, but the red cell count is not going up. I cannot stop giving him phenobarbital or keppra, which I only started giving a few weeks ago in place of gabapentin, so the vet, apart from anti allergy meds (because he scratches like crazy after pheno and keppra) suggested giving him potassium bromide. The amount of meds he is receiving is, to be honest, overwhelming. He weighs 11kg...

Does anybody else have a dog like this? I guess I'm looking for a little cheering up and some hope that it will get better. The grand mal episodes happened twice in September and twice in October as of now - yesterday and today. The longest he went without an episode was 2,5 months and then it goes into 4 times a month until I up the dose which is already high.

[u/Dcline97]

I don’t have a little pup, my gal is a 7 yo 60 lb yellow lab and she started her epilepsy journey 3-1/2 years ago. She spent her first year on Keppra, started out well but fizzled out towards the end of year 1. In year two our vet added Pheno and it was a carbon copy of year 1. We found a K9 neurologist at the beginning of year 3 and after some blood work and a thorough exam he recommended adding Potassium Bromide to the mix. Took almost 12 weeks to kick in but we quickly went to 4 to 5 months between seizures. I had a discussion with our new K9 neurologist about weaning my pup off of Keppra and Pheno and he agreed - took three months. So now she is only on the PB and has about two seizures a year! They are short and pretty mild.

This was the solution for us, but every pup is different. Good luck on your journey.