Bipolar Support Group

I haven't posted to the board in awhile since things have been rather hectic around here. As you know, I'm preparing to retire my guide dog. Aside from that, I've been having awful nightmares due to my Prozac. I saw my pdoc a few weeks ago and he decided to titrate my Risperdal to 6mg/day. I'm currently on 5mg and doing very, very well. I'm no longer manic either. Apparently my tdoc and pdoc think that my mania was caused by stopping Risperdal and which created problems of its' own. My next appointment with my pdoc is on November 16th. Finally I think I'm at the point where I believe my meds are working well for me. One thing I've learned is *not* to stop taking my meds even if I'm ill. Next time, I plan to contact my pdoc or the ER first. I hope all of you are doing well!

It's great to be back on the board. To answer your questions, I'm struggling with alot of difficult feelings about retiring my dog, but I did receive good news yesterday. I've been approved for home training which will begin later this winter. I can't wait! As for BigJ's question, yes, I'm blind. (By the way, I don't mind you asking. ) I use a screen reader which reads aloud information that appears on the computer screen and sends this information to a Braille display where it is read by me. I can navigate to any part of the screen by issuing keyboard commands to the screen reader or Braille display. I'm able to read online newspapers, Word documents, e-mail and just about anything that doesn't contain graphics since screen readers cannot recognize them.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

I'm discussing alot of my feelings about retiring my dog with my tdoc, so that's definitely helping. My dog and I have been together for 11 years and she's 13 years old. According to her vet, labs generally live for 12-13 years, so I'm very lucky that she is still here with me. We've been through alot together, but at least I know she will be in good hands when my sister takes care of her.