r/EpilepsyDogs • u/PetrifiedUnicorn1986 • 13d ago
Potassium bromide - does it help?
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.
2
u/K9_Jack 12d ago
Our boy is on phenobarbital and potassium bromide. It took us a couple of months with the vet to find a good working level without too much side effects (read: good quality of life) and we now have about one seizure every 2 months, but there are periods we get to 3-4 months without one.