Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash 

Today I want to talk to you about one of the Topamax side effects that’s impacted me the most over the past few months: lack of feeling or emotion.

I’ve always been an intensely emotional person. Whatever I feel, I feel it BIG, except that hasn’t been the case ever since my thyroidectomy back in January. If you read my last post, Tapering Off Topamax, then you know I had a total thyroidectomy in January, and that I was chalking a lot of awful Topamax side effects up to my body struggling to recover and adjust to the synthetic thyroid hormones post-op.

Dead Inside

I don’t think that “lack of feeling or emotion” really does this side effect justice, if we’re being honest. For me, it’s been an ever-increasing lack of ability to access my emotions, either positive or negative, to the point where I’ve been feeling completely dead inside and entirely not myself, ever since my surgery in January.

It wasn’t so bad at first, but the longer I’ve been without a thyroid, the worse my body seems to be at handling the Topamax, and the more intense the side effects seem to be. They were manageable in the beginning. I kept telling myself that I just felt bad because I’d just had surgery, and I just needed to give it time and let my body recover and adjust to the synthetic thyroid hormones. I kept telling myself that things would get better. But they didn’t.

I’ve been feeling less and less, growing more and more emotionally closed off ever since my surgery, to the point where it’s affecting my relationships, my ability to write, and my ability to function. I was on a call with a friend a few nights ago, frustrated that I’ve been having so much trouble with my writing lately, and I was stunned by what I told her.

“I want to care, but I can’t. I want to write, but I can’t. I don’t feel anything at all. It’s like I’m completely dead inside I just… I just don’t care, and I don’t know why I don’t care.”

This was a few days before my epiphany about the Topamax and the side effects.

I was feeling so listless and unmotivated and discouraged that I was ready to give up writing, a thing that I’ve had a lifelong passion for, because I just couldn’t feel a single damn thing, and I didn’t know why.

I momentarily wondered if I needed to consider going back into therapy or getting back on anti-depressants, but this felt very different to me than when I was depressed. This yawning void of emptiness and not caring was just… not me, and it turns out it was one of the side effects of the Topamax that I’ve been struggling with.

What’s even wilder to me is that I was struggling for months and months, feeling worse and worse every day, and I didn’t say anything to anybody because I didn’t want to be a bother or a “Debbie Downer” type of person.

I just kept telling myself that it had to be because of the surgery, and that surely my body would recover soon enough and everything would be just fine. But it wasn’t fine, and if I hadn’t missed my Topamax several days ago and felt so much better, then researched and put two and two together about these side effects, I would still be telling myself that it’s just because of my thyroid surgery and that I shouldn’t bother anybody about this, because surely I’ll start feeling better soon and everything will be just fine.