Normal prolactin levels are about 15, thanks to being on a high dose of Risperdal, mine are >200.

So the doc started me on some prolactin lowering pills. According to her, my chest size should deflate a little, and hopefully the rest of my body a little too, and my libido might come back. I'm more excited about this than Patri seems to be: he doesn't like the idea of taking one pill to fix the side effects of another, he just wants me to get onto a lower dose of Risperdal. I would like that too. I figure I'll start lowering dosage again once I'm back in The States and no longer jet lagged.

Risperdal increases prolactin more than other antipsychotics. Patri found a study on this: Cabergoline treatment of risperidone-induced hyperprolactinemia: a pilot study.

I really doesn't feel like day 2, I feel like I've been year two years. Maybe that's because we spent 39 hrs of transit time in order to get here, coming straight from the workshop that I assisted for three days.

There were a few things I wanted to journal, but I'm too tired now to remember them. One thing I've said repeatedly is just how glad I am that Patri is here with me. Its very different than the US here, tiring, and chaotic. Patri handles chaos much better than I do, so I get to relax a little by following his lead.

A couple of things that stand out:

- Every woman here is either wearing a sari or a burka. The only western clothing I've seen on women are a couple of times where I saw someone wearing a traditional Indian top with jeans.

- Women ride on the backs of motorcycles side saddle!! I guess because you can't ride split leg very well wearing a sari or berka. I was commenting to Patri about how unsafe that is, and then we were in an almost accident where we stopped suddenly and a woman fell off the back of the bike. She was okay and just needed a little help to get back on.

- There are almost no traffic lights, and no stop signs. Drivers are honking constantly.

Website

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Shannon is an accredited Coactive Coach from The Coaches Training Institute (CTI). She has completed the CTI fundamental training, certification, and assisted training workshops. She also volunteers as a crisis line counselor.

Shannon has a degree from University of California San Diego in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts. This involved classes ranging from classic art and art history to HTML. Java programming, and Calculus. Not many art students do well in Java and Calculus, so she was one of only a handful to graduate from the program in her school year.

Shannon has associate degrees in business and economics, and has had her own business as a piano teacher. She has traveled around the world, is a classically trained artist, and helped found an intentional community.

As a coach, Shannon is intuitive, insightful, and thought provoking for her clients. She helps her clients gain self understanding, a greater ability to do what they want to do in life, and a greater capacity to slow down and enjoy what they achieve.

New Home page:

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Personal Coaching, a way to Improve Your Life!

As your coach I'm here as a mirror for your introspection. I can reflect back to you things about yourself from a new perspective. I also help you look more carefully from the outside. What sort of job do you really want? Are you working toward having the influence you want to have in the world?

We will work together to help you:

* Grow your self acceptance and understanding.
* Create high level goals.
* Create enthusiasm and structure to work toward your goals.

You will bring pieces of your life to our call: your anxiety about a career change, excitement and fear of a new romance, annoyance at yourself for not having done the dishes this morning. Whatever is happening in your day is a way for us to connect with your core, what you truly care about, what brings you fulfillment.

For more information, email: info @ starrynightcoaching.com

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Typo and grammar insights welcomed :)

Just listening to the lull of the engines. Slept for the night, crappy airplane sleep, but sleep none the less. Now its just peace.

I don't normally write these moments, but here one is while I'm on my computer. Flying up in the sky, at night, in a dimly lit plane.

I am so grateful that Patri got his visa.

I sarcastically asked a stranger in public: "What's your problem?!??" this evening. I don't know that I've ever told someone off in that sort of scenario before.

As we were exiting the plane, he started lecturing me about how my ebook reader is an electronic device, and how just because I work for Google* I shouldn't be so arrogant and think I'm above the rules.

*_{I don't, I was just wearing Patri's old Google sweatshirt.}

I was going to buck it up and go by myself and let Patri ship his sperm, but eventually decided that I was crazy, and that I should have Patri there in case something goes haywire with the travel and I get bipolar crazy, which is not an unreasonable given how much changes in my routine fuck me up.

As those who read his journal know, the Indian consulate is denying Patri's visa. He's already driven to SF once to try to wrangle with them, and will probably end up driving back tomorrow, and he's guessing that there's about a 1/3rd chance that he's just not going to get his visa in time for us to travel.

We were thinking about how to deal with rescheduling our trip, but it eventually dawned on me that I could go without Patri and give him a few more days, since we don't need his sperm until later in the process. And then Patri realized that its still a win even if Patri doesn't make it, because we can freeze my eggs and ship his sperm.

You lose 15% of the eggs in the thawing process, and I don't know if frozen eggs take as well as unfrozen, so we'd like to avoid that scenario, but its better than nothing, and this may be the best we've got.

I was prepared to go by myself, but now that I've gotten used to the notion that Patri will be with me, the notion of going by myself is suddenly very unpleasant. Its not going to be like Europe or China where I was traveling without baggage and exploring. I'm going to be tied to the hospital, and I need to be home to take shots in the morning and evening, and I'm on meds that make me want to sleep a lot, which would drive me crazy if I forgot to take them. And then there's managing sleep and med taking schedules while moving between time zones....

Exciting and adventurous to say the least.

And I let Patri talk me into packing light, and I'm packed for the LA trip for the next several days, so I don't have much to wear for Singapore and India, although I imagine our hotel will have a laundry service for me to throw my mercy on. When I traveled Europe I only brought two changes of clothes and just washed my clothes in the sink every couple of days. I even wore thong underwear instead of briefs to take up less space.

michaelkeenan answered my question about how Risperdal causes people to gain weight by looking up some studies.

( Read more... )

In summary, unless I become a workout fiend, putting on weight seems inevitable, but at least I don't need to feel so irresponsibly weak about my weight gain.

When I got married, that was what I really wanted. A life partner.

But I've never really trusted that. Life happens, about 50% of marriages end up in divorce.

Something that occurred to me recently is that having Tovar does make Patri my life partner.

Kids care about their parents. No matter how good or how bad a parent is, what mommy and daddy did or didn't do is something that they care deeply about.

And because of that, because both Patri and I have that bond with Tovar, we are tied forever.

As I described to Susan, realizing this is one of two major holes I've filled through which the craziness of my bipolar episodes leak through. One is that Patri wants to be with me. He knows me really well. I've told him at length all of the disaster scenarios I see why he'd want to leave me. And he still doesn't want me to leave.

So why I still often have that "I'm not good enough" feeling, I've come to accept that I cannot rationalize breaking up with Patri on his behalf anymore. That was a big one.

And now this with Tovar is even more stabilizing, because unlike with Patri, where its often a mystery to me why he would want me, with Tovar its very clear. I'm his Mama. I can understand that basic human need. No one can replace me, even if they took way better care of him than I would. I've just been empathizing with him a lot more lately, and seeing that from his eyes.

There are some times when I can really feel the limits of my IQ relative to Patri. Playing the game Small World would be one of those times. Its not that he's any better at reasoning than I am, its that he can think on so many fronts at the same time. Pure processing power that he has and I don't.

Not such a big deal in my life so long as I choose not to play the game with him ;)

This reminds me of the article I read about the rat whose memory was increased three fold. If I could increase my memory I would kick ass too.

Its invigorating to be hitting the limits, feeling the sensation of "I am pressing myself to the maximum that my brain is capable of, and I can see the cut off point." Its not a good place to stay.

And then, what if I'm wrong. What if its just the case that there's this game, that I'm new at, that if I just learned a little more I'd find that the limits (relative) are illusions and I just don't understand the game yet?

In general, when we get a new game, I usually win for the first few times we play on intuition, and then Patri figures out his strategy and implements it in a way that is beyond my patience to calculate. For him it comes naturally so he doesn't need patience.

Good thing he's usually on my team :)

And its humbling to think of the worlds of people who can process so much more than either of us. Its layers and layers of picking up patterns an analyzing them. Of course, that has to work within constraints too, because layers upon layers of even on level bad analyzing just leads to well thought out poor results. I would expect.

I feel small right now. In a way that is more frustrating than good or bad. I want to understand! And I want to be the best! Not that "the best" would be any less frustrating, because none of us are all that smart in the scheme of things.

I've finally gotten the sleep study and its results.

I've got mild sleep apnea. The interesting part is that its clustered: during my REM sleep, my apnea is actually severe.

Maybe that's why I wake up so much with vivid dreams that I'm being chased? Is that not normal?

Anyway, I have several options that might make the problem better, although the doctor says that the condition is degenerative, and likely to get worse around once I hit menopause.

Cpap is what she calls the gold standard, she's pretty certain that cpap would solve my problem, but since the apnea is mild, an oral appliance might do the trick, and there are soft tissue surgeries that might work also. She suggested that I work on both the oral appliance and the soft tissue routes at the same time.

Again, wow it would be so nice to need less sleep.

I've been feeling pretty uninspired these past few days. My personal trainer told me that its been a long period where she's noticed my being depressed.

That makes sense. I don't feel depressed per se, just uninspired and wanting to sleep all the time ;) And of course, I am just coming out the other end of that really nasty mixed state.

The tiredness is directly related to the meds. When I first upped my Risperdal dosage I was sleeping 15hrs/day. I'm down to wanting at least 12, and still being tired even on the occasion that I do get it.

But hopefully I'll be able to lower my dosage starting for the new year. I'm waiting until after the India jet lag to try any changes -- if anything I might end up needing to increase my meds during that time, but hopefully I'll be okay where I'm at.

Luckily I'm just starting my life coaching business so my schedule still has a lot of flexibility for naps and whatnot. Coaching and working out are the things that give me energy and leave me feeling refreshed.

In addition to my mood generally being somewhat of a downer, I have very mixed feelings about the upcoming trip to India, which has been the source of much bitching and moaning, thankfulness to those who have been kind enough to listen.

I just realized another very important factor in my weight: I just gave myself that crazy shot! I bet it causes weight gain.... its just insane that I can't fit into the same pants today that I was wearing last week...

I increased my Risperdal dosage and have been eating poorly, and have thus gained back the 10-15lbs I'd lost over the course of the past year in about 1 month.

Sigh.

Its a case of going on tilt, where things started to get bad and then I kept making them worse. Increased Risperdal is supposed to make you gain weight, but I started eating a shitty diet too at the same time.

I'm on the fence about bucking up the willpower to try to change my diet now or if I want to just wait til the new year, especially since whatever I do I'm going to be heading to LA, and then India in about a week in a half, first messing up my eating habits and then putting me into a place with a totally different diet.

I should probably try to get off tilt as soon as possible, or I'm going to go past my prior weight max, just like most dieters end up doing :(

I don't know how weight gain with Risperdal works. Is it that it makes you retain fat more, or is it that it makes one want food more. So it actually could be that all of this really is because of the Risperdal.

And even if I do eat better, I still have that effect.

Anyway, whatever. Its just sad that so much progress can be undone so quickly, and that I feel so much worse with that extra 10-15 than I do without it. I wish I could turn off my preoccupation with how I look, its so stupid and pointless, although I think it may have more to do with hormones than willpower, based on what a friend said about going on and off estrogen and noticing that she had a huge spike in feeling bad about her looks when she had high estrogen levels, whereas she normally didn't care so much.

The other important thing to note is that no matter where I'm at now, it doesn't cancel out the fact that I did spend time at a lesser weight. Its not like now is an end point that makes everything else meaningless.

An amazing friend of mine started her own charter school in Mission Valley, near San Diego. If you know anyone with school aged children in the area, please send them here:

http://innovationsacademy.org/

Her school is wonderful, a real gift to anyone who goes there, and I really want to see it survive through this crummy economy.

I took the Zoladex shot today. It has to be taken 20 days the start of the period in order to make timing flexible so that we can pick a plane flight that doesn't revolve around the exact date of my next period.

The Panamanian agency sucked, they didn't have me do the shot, and the timing was much to tight for my preference. Luckily capitalism_yeah warned me about the shot, and some other technical aspects of IVF, so I wasn't caught off guard with the difference.

( about giving myself the shot )

Time is flying, and this happened fast. Patri and I fly to India midnight on December 13th, and should get back right right about the new year. We might end up flying on New Years Eve.

2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009.

Poll #1487352 Future 2010!!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

What do you want to accomplish over the next 3 years?

How about the next 5 years? The next 20 years?

What do you want others to think of you when you're dead?

What do you really like doing with your time?

What don't you ever want to do again?

What type of people do you want in your life?

Something several men have cited to me (especially my narcissistic personality disorder misogynist ex) is a distribution curve of intelligence of men v.s. women.

The distribution says that women and men average roughly the same intelligence, but the difference is that women are more "average" on average, whereas men are more on the tails, so there are more very stupid men and *ahem* more very smart men. And the smartest of smart men are much smarter than the smartest of smart women.

These are stats that are very empowering to men, and disempowering to women. You can talk a lot of bullshit about how its saying that women are on average the same, and arguably better since there are less stupid women. But saying that we don't reach the same peaks is disheartening. It makes us lesser than.

And it groups us. Individuals in this category of women. Despite that I am much smarter than most men, I'm still *a woman* and *women* are on average less smart than *men.* My *male counterpart* is smarter than me.

Now what does one do? These statistics exist. They aren't going to be ignored. And statistics oriented men like to talk about them, because they tend to be smart, and the stats say that they are superior: to both other men and to women.

But its damaging to tell people that they're of a class that isn't as good. And this negative message is mixed into everything. We can ignore it, because there is so much like it that is mixed in, that it seems pretty pointless to pick a fight.

You can engage people who like statistics and tell them about the negative impact, but they like statistics, and I don't know of an alternative where they can acknowledge their statistics while not making a lesser than.

People use the statistics in different ways. My *#$@ ex used them to make women feel bad, because he's a manipulative misogynist scum of the earth. My husband uses them to brag, but not to make anyone feel bad.