Let me get this straight.  A woman has had a seizure just after delivery.
One, count it, just one.  Six months later, with no intervening seizures,
they want to put her on one of two drugs nobody knows anything about?

1. If it were me, I would not go on any medication for a single seizure.
The side effects of the medication are likely to be greater than the
negative effects of an occasional seizure, but she may never have another
ever again.  It does happen that someone has a single seizure and never has
another, and it ain't rare.

2. Is it not a principle of pharmacotherapeutics, to use the least toxic,
most commonly used, oldest (and thus best known) drug, unless it has been
shown to be ineffective?  In my book, yes, although not in the drug reps'
book, since the below options are probably no longer patented, and thus are
much less expensive.  I mean, if there has been something left out of the
story and she really needs to go on a drug, why not phenytoin, which has
been around forever, and is effective?  Or carbamazepine?  Or valproic acid?
Or phenobarbital for that matter, which costs about 30 cents a year.

I would get another opinion.

Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC