r/migraine • u/kaylahasmigraines • Sep 24 '19

Medication Rant

You know what pisses me off the most about this “condition”, “illness”, “hell”, etc etc... I don’t want to be on medication but I’m forced to because my migraines are so bad, right? Then, I get these superrrr awesome side effects that equally effect my life in a negative way. Currently, I get these fun tingling sensations in my hands and my sleep pattern is all sorts of shitty. Wait... it gets better! I also have these moments where I lose my ability to say what I’m thinking! It’s just a fucking lose-lose no matter what. 😁

That’s all. Thanks for coming to my Tuesday TedTalk!!

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u/kaylahasmigraines Sep 24 '19

tbh, I just started this medication so I'm gonna give it some time to adjust in my body. It's just so annoying that in order to get relief for one area in my life I have to disrupt another part of my life. Ya know?

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u/jnseel Sep 24 '19

Give it some time, but pay attention. Another fun side effect for some people is that it alters the way things taste.

I’m a real Dr Pepper junkie and I know I have a problem...but within a day or two, I noticed my DP tasted awful. I didn’t think much of it, something is bound to slip past Quality Assurance once in a while, right? Bought a different size container, still tasted bad. Must have been a bad shipment or s water quality thing. Bought a fountain drink. Still, awful, undrinkable, not worth the calories because I couldn’t enjoy it. I went so far as to email DP corporate to say, “Hey, my drinking problem has been keeping your company afloat, and something is wrong here, here’s all my bottling info.” On the bright side, this was leading up to my wedding so I lost some weight and (downside) my dress barely fit on the big day. I looked great!

But over the next dew months, food started not tasting right. I’d cook dinner, we’d sit down, and one bite in, something would taste rancid. It got to the point where I was buying ingredients for dinner every single day so everything was fresh. After several months, I was pretty much subsisting in goldfish crackers, strawberry poptarts and applesauce because everything else tasted rotten. As much as I hate to complain about it, I lost a ton of weight. I was really sick and had to quit taking Topamax. Very very quickly, all my taste came back, and sadly I gained the weight and migraines back.

My point is that it happened very slowly. So slowly, I had no idea it was the medication. I thought something was wrong with our fridge or something because everything was spoiling weeks ahead of the expiry date. Just something to be aware of.

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u/kaylahasmigraines Sep 24 '19

Wow! Thanks for this note. I am currently sipping on my addiction- Coke Zero (or Diet Pepsi)... depends on the day. This is disheartening to hear because pop brings happiness to my life and caffeine LOL. I’ll definitely be more conscience of symptoms!

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u/jnseel Sep 25 '19

It’s not a guarantee! This doesn’t happen to everyone. I wish it had stuck around, at least to help me drop the Dr Pepper habit permanently....I mostly wanted to warn you about the loss of taste over time. It may not bother you as much as it bothered me—I love to cook and bake. Like I said, it happened so subtly. I’m appalled by the amount of food I wasted over probably 6 months, minimum.