Hello, Thank you for asking at HCM. I carefully read your question and understand your concern. Tegretol is a good medication for nerve pain and can be given if traditional pain medications do not help. In elderly we have to be very careful on prescribing as side effects might be more often and severe, this is true for most of the medications and sometimes doses in elderly might need to be smaller than is younger patient and this might be the case with tegretol also. Because of her age and the complication with stroke recently I guess your mother in law might be having other diseases and risk factors and taking other medications also. In this case it is very important to check the possible interactions tegretol might have with the rest of the medications and make the needed adjustments. This is a concern you might need to share with the doctor that cares for her to make sure she is not going to have adverse effect due to the combination of several drugs. You also need to consult a doctor for any complaint she has so to be able to detect early any possible side effects and treat properly. I wish this answers to your question and is helpful to you. Best regards, Dr. Antoneta