Hello @Lindy58 - welcome to the community. I am glad you have found this community and joined us 
Wrt to medications, it is standard practice to prescribe to stroke survivors. In our experience, we always wanted to use as few medications as possible because that is how we were before we had the stroke.
After the stroke we were on several medications:
- to serve as preventative - prevent future strokes
- corrective - to correct/manage new conditions (insulin as we became diabetic)
- blood pressure management
All of these medications led to problems i.e. the related side effects and we wanted to come off as soon as possible.
We had stopped using insulin and blood pressure medication after we had been tested and it was evident that these medications were not necessary and possibly detrimental to our health and wellbeing i.e. we were no longer diabetic and our blood pressure was normal.
Eventually we also came off the blood thinner that was given to reduce risk of future stroke.
Finally, this is just our experience and you should seek professional advice and consider if what we are saying is suitable for you.
I can categorically tell you we had seizures post stroke and they tell you these do happen to some stroke survivors. We don’t take anything at face value and after doing some thinking and doing some research we concluded that in our case the reason for the seizures (which only happened after the stroke) was due to
Low sodium level. Our sodium level had fallen to a dangerously low level and we concluded this was down to the use of blood pressure reducing medication (which by this time we had stopped since BP was no longer high).
When we ended up in hospital because of the seizures, anti-epileptic medication was prescribed to manage or prevent future seizures. Again, this is standard practice when the doctors look at symptoms rather than cause. Our immediate thought was no to the anti-seizure meds.
Logic - cause of seizures was low sodium (electrolytes) and so normalise this and seizures will stop. Our dietician asked us to add half a teaspoon of table salt to our hydrating fluid (water) each day. In so doing, our sodium (which had been normalised via IV whilst in hospital) we managed to keep a normal sodium level and our seizures have stopped. But this may not be the case for everyone.
We have had a recent incident where we again had seizures and again they were caused as a result of medication we were given which in this case reduced another essential electrolyte - magnesium. This was again treated by IV during an inpatient stay in hospital. We refuse to take the medication that caused the magnesium level to drop (we were offered a different medicine, which we use sparingly i.e. on an as needed basis rather than continuous). Again, we have not had any seizures and we stopped the anti-seizure meds after explaining our reasoning to the consultant. They didn’t agree / denied their meds caused the seizures, but we agreed to disagree and we are happy with no seizures and no [unnecessary] meds.
Answer: with caveat. Yes, we came off the meds as explained above for the reasons above and we have never been happier.
But, you must consider if this is appropriate for you as we are all different and our needs are different.
Wishing you and your husband all the best.
Namaste|
