Topa Dose Escalation= what should my 'scripts be?

[anchorite]

I'm going in to meet with my doctor to go back on Topamax. I had tried it over a year ago and had horrific depression. Went off after about 5 days. Well, I've been on Welbutrin for over a year and realized I might have a better chance with Topa. I'm heading into week 3 and all is good. So I am back to get a new prescription.

Looking over the dosing schedule, I can't for the life of me figure out what is best to ask my doctor to prescribe, since I never got that far. My insurance will cover even a 200 mg pill, and will fill 90 days at a time.

Anyone have any knowledge about how they got their prescriptions filled to have enough to match the dose escalation? I have a pill splitter. Oops! I had written spill pitter. Thank you Topa!:thanks:

[spacebebe01]

Topa Dose Escalation= what should my 'scripts be?

Hi anchorit, Im not sure what your asking, do you mean you have to work out yourself how many 25mg, 50mg pills you might need for the next 90 days yourself and that the doctor who prescribes it doesnt do it? Im in UK so that seems odd to me that you would tell your pharmacy how much you need and they give just give it to you here the doctor would write the script stating how many of each dose and when to take it and either he or the pharmasist would work out how many to give me of each dose tablet you need. You are best to take the schedule along and if he agrees to that then to get the maximum dose allowed for it even if you are not going to need to take that many ie. if you dont go up every week because of se's you wont actually need the amount of pills but its better to have too many that not enough. I dont have the MWO book to hasnd so off the top of my head for example you would need:-

Week 1. 25mg each day so 7 25mg tablets
Week 2. 2x25mg eavy day so 14 25mg tablets
Week 3. 75mg a day split up into 1 25mg tablet and 1 50mg tablet so 7 25mg tablets and 7 50mg tablets
Week 4. 100mg a day so 14 50mg tablets

And then add all the different doses up.

And so on as the dose goes up, your doctor should add all these up and work it out for you also giving you instructions on how and when to take them, if you dont understand ask him, or of course come back on here. There is a thread called starting topa with a question and there are quite a few people on there who are taking topa at the moment and also some who have taken it in the past. Go on there you will get a warm welcome and support.

Do you get my drift, of course you may not take these you may have se's so need to stay on that dose for an extra week for that to clear up, also when you have reach a stage where you are not craving anymore you shoulkd stop increasing so the fact that you are getting a script for 90 days you may well have tablets left over as you stopped increasing at 100mg a day.

Good luck with it, I really liked topa and only stopped taking it due to a mix up, I cant go back on it as it would interact with another med I am now taking.

[anchorite]

Topa Dose Escalation= what should my 'scripts be?

Hi Spacebebe-

Insurance companies here in the US are so weird, and I also didn't know how my doctor was going to react to my asking for both 100 mg and 300 mg prescriptions, nor whether or not my insurance company would do both, so was more wondering if any one had ever calculated the total amount and figured out if it was easier just to ask their doctor to prescribe only 300 mg, for example. Just not wanting to wave a red flag at my insurance company LOL! But my doctor was totally cool, and she wrote my a 100mg 2x a day with a 2 time refill, and said she would write an additional 300mg 2x a day after I'd burned through that. So it all worked out. Thank you for the reply!