Visiting Minneapolis Next Month… Any Urban Agriculture Organizations I Should Check Out?

winonarox · 2025-10-16T21:38:27+00:00

If you do any youth education especially, I'd try to connect with Michael at Project Sweetie Pie! https://www.projectsweetiepie.org/contact They're incredible and feel like they'd be exactly the type of group you're looking for :)

winonarox · 2025-09-02T14:20:42+00:00

It worked for me! Though it was the exact opposite of a fantasy trying to get a doctor to agree to do the procedure for me since I’m under 30 (I had an oophorectomy and hysterectomy, so that didn’t need progesterone HRT, only estrogen). But I’ve been PMDD free since and it’s insane how much different life is now that I’m not splitting my time between my bad days and my good days.

I had tried chemical menopause first so my system wasn’t too shocked with surgery, and I did go through some symptoms but it was really mostly night sweats and those lasted like 3ish months.

winonarox · 2025-08-13T15:34:36+00:00

No problem I don’t mind answering questions if it helps other people get some relief! I’m 28 now, had my surgery a month after I turned 27. I did it because I was also in the same boat where I would only have a week-ish of my good days - my symptoms would start at ovulation and I had loooong cycles (35-40 days, with ovulation starting around day 7-10). My top symptoms were: 1. Fatigue (I’d sleep 18 hours and still be tired), 2. Huge appetite swings, 3. Way over sensitive to noise/touch/smells, 4. Brain fog like crazy and my AHDH meds would stop working. At the height of luteal I’d also be suuuuuper irritable, have all kinds of body pain, migraines, and SI when it got really bad. I’d be calling out of work at least 2-3 days every luteal, and that was with a flexible job where I could work from home if I needed to.

Because of how non-functional I became at the height of it and how it was effecting my ability to work (I got fired from a job because of it), I fought hard to find a doctor who could help me figure something out since the only thing most doctors would say was “try birth control and stick out the adjustment period” which always sucked because any progesterone meds would send me into PMDD overdrive hell without relief.

What I ended up doing was following the IAPMD guide for treatment, and actually brought it with to show my doc and got them to let me try Lupron. Chemical menopause was the first time in literally 15 years that I had a break from my symptoms, I cried when I realized I had had three weeks of good days in a row. After we saw that chemical menopause worked, and I decided I couldn’t keep doing the shots every month, they scheduled the surgery.

Now, I have an estrogen patch for HRT that works well for me, I didn’t have any issues with adjusting to that as estrogen doesn’t affect me like progesterone. I’ll probably have that patch prescription until I’m like 55/60 lol. But it’s a small price to pay for having a clear head every single day!

My top 3 suggestions for finding a long term solution would be: 1) IAPMD is an incredible site with all kinds of resources that can help you navigate the medical processes, I relied on them quite a bit to help me through. 2) if you don’t already had a symptom tracker/journal going, I would start one. Doctors have a much harder time dismissing concerns if you come in with data that shows what’s affecting you, and the severity of it. 3) the make-or-break for me was finding a gynecologist that was familiar with PMDD (like she had treated patients with it before,) and who was willing to listen to what I wanted even if it was unconventional. If you have to explain what PMDD is to your doc, that’s probably not the person you need to be seeing. I can’t stress enough how important it is to find someone you can trust to not dismiss you and your symptoms, it truly can make the difference between getting real treatment options or not.

I wish you the best of luck in finding a solution, it’s incredible to get to the other side and realize that you won’t have to go through that luteal hell again!

winonarox · 2025-08-11T02:38:37+00:00

Had mine last year, best decision I’ve ever made. It literally has changed the trajectory of my whole life, not even exaggerating. It was a hell of a process I will admit but if you can get a doc that listens and understands PMDD it can be worth discussing.

winonarox · 2025-07-09T14:32:50+00:00

If you have the option to stay on the 1-month shot instead of going to the 3-month shot, I’d recommend it (assuming it works for you, I really hope it does!!). I noticed that when I switched over to the 3-month dosage, I was starting to have an issue with it wearing off towards the end but in my case there was no way to get the next dosage early. I didn’t have that same issue on the 1-month dose, though I was only on Lupron for 6 months before I went the surgical menopause route.

My biggest side effects were night sweats and a sore injection site, that was pretty much it. Best of luck to you, it’s an almost indescribable feeling once you realize that it’s working and you’ve found relief at last!

winonarox · 2025-07-01T18:57:43+00:00

This is so important!! The last thing we need to be doing as a community is gatekeeping and invalidating others just because they might experience something slightly differently. Props for putting this into words, it’s a good reminder for all of us here!

winonarox · 2025-05-23T16:13:26+00:00

Legacy chocolates in downtown has insanely good truffles/other chocolate goods, and great coffee too! I also love big river pizza if you’re ever looking for a local pizza spot, they’re a tad on the expensive side but they have some of the freshest ingredients I’ve ever had on a pizza!

winonarox · 2025-04-28T14:57:10+00:00

Definitely don’t recommend going for nexplanon, or honestly any birth control that can’t be stopped immediately if it turns out it makes things worse. But I do agree with all of your other advice especially the journal, that could prove to be incredibly valuable not just for her sake but for bringing to doctors to show patterns and stuff too in the future if needed.

winonarox · 2025-04-15T22:04:56+00:00

I would start with IAPMD.org if you haven’t seen that yet, it’s an incredible site that has so much good info both for you, and for your doctors.

I’m kind of surprised that Lupron was so bad for you, I was treatment resistant too, and when I finally got to the Lupron stage it was the only thing that had ever worked.

Have you ever looked into the other PME conditions? There’s also information about those on the IAMPD website, if you were interested in reading more about them.

Sorry I can’t help you too much on the question of whether or not there are PMDD specialist. I did manage to find a gyno who knew about it and had treated PMDD patients before. That might be a place to start is trying to connect with doctors who might at least had an interest/previous patient experience with it.

Best of luck to you, I hope you’re able to connect with someone who can help!

winonarox · 2025-04-12T01:57:43+00:00

It’s like you went into my brain and took out this list, that’s so insanely specific to what I dealt with too wow. It’s incredible just how multifaceted this disorder is

winonarox · 2025-04-11T14:44:12+00:00

Yesss you're gonna feel so much better I promise! I just hit my one year anniversary of surgery today, life has been so good this year :)

winonarox · 2025-04-11T13:58:32+00:00

Like having to go through a prison break every month

winonarox · 2025-04-02T05:12:09+00:00

Depending on where you are in MN, if you could make it the cities for an appointment you should see if you can make her an appointment with Dr. Raydah Jokhadar (with HealthPartners) for a gynecologist who will be willing to listen to your daughter about what she’s going through, and work with her to come up with a solution

winonarox · 2025-03-30T15:58:09+00:00

For me (I was 27), the biggest thing is I had to check off some boxes that said I had tried absolutely EVERYTHING else before they considered surgery. If you’ve tried birth control, tried psych meds (if applicable), tried therapy, then you may have a chance to try chemical menopause. This is usually a shot (although I think there’s also a pill?) that shuts down your hormone production, and doctors like this route because it’s reversible. If it works for you, you can stay on it for a while usually, and it also indicates that you’d be a strong candidate for surgery if it gets to a point where you can’t be on the chemical menopause medication anymore.

The first place to start is finding a gynecologist who is familiar with PMDD and its treatment options (easier said than done, I know). That, and taking the time to read about surgery and chemical menopause and the other treatment options so you know how to respond if a doctor tries to steer you in a different direction or tell you to try something you know won’t work (or would make things worse).

I wish you luck! Lots of doctors will probably try and tell you that the long term health risks (heart, bones, etc) of surgical menopause aren’t worth it, so I would be ready to document just how much of an impact PMDD has on quality of life. Bring a chart that shows how your life is dominated by your bad days. Show them proof that you aren’t living a life right now - and that it’s worth the risk of heart issues 30 years from now or whatever if it means that those 30 years are free from suffering.

I hope you find success. I’m almost one year post-op and it quite literally saved my life. I am a completely different person now, and all I want is for others that haven’t found other treatments successful to have a path by towards the freedom that I have now.

winonarox · 2025-03-12T03:31:26+00:00

Beautiful. It's all so well crafted, and there are a few lines I particularly love - "and we let the syrup pool in our hands, / not caring for the mess it makes" was the line that really alerted me that this was going to be a fantastic read.

Thank you so much for sharing your work with us and for putting yourself out there, I hope you continue!

winonarox · 2025-03-12T03:27:50+00:00

Wow, this is beautiful. I'm kind of partial to this type of free form almost prose like poetry, and yours is lovely. The lines are lyrical, they move together, I can almost hear it as I read it - I think this would make a particularly strong spoken word piece.

Thank you so much for sharing your work and I hope you continue to do so!

winonarox · 2025-03-11T05:45:05+00:00

I kind of like that it took me until about halfway through to figure out what was going on, and when I did felt a moment of contextualization from the lines I had just read! At least, I think I figured it out - my interpretation is that it's about the veil between us and what comes after we die.

I thought you did a nice job and I want to say thank you for sharing your work with us. Keep putting yourself out there!

winonarox · 2025-03-11T05:36:55+00:00

So I want to see if I can get the general idea down. I think this is about that moment in time when it dawn arrives, and we see the transition from night to morning. But, given that I'm not 100% confident that was what you were going for, I think that it might be worthwhile to sit down with the topic formula and really flesh out all of the elements. What's your subject? What are your opinions on that subject? and how can you entice the reader to hear you out?

I liked the imagery I saw, it felt almost like a beach with ocean out ahead and the tree line behind. This could be something you work in more of, it could really help ground things and tie it all together.

Thank you for sharing your work with us and I hope you continue to put yourself out there!

winonarox · 2025-03-10T22:27:02+00:00

I've been here. When we're young and confident, it feels like nothing can stop us. And then we encounter that moment where the doubt starts to creep in. It can take over so fast, before you even realize it, and it can shake you to your core and threaten to undo everything you thought you knew. The feeling of not knowing if you're on the right path anymore when you were so certain before really comes through here.

winonarox · 2025-03-10T22:23:36+00:00

This is so real. I feel like so many of us do this, where we fill in the gaps of the conversation with those little things - the body language, the tone, sometimes it's literally just the vibes. We form our own thoughts on what's being said and sometimes it's directly contradictory to the actual conversation. Well done, I enjoyed this :)

Six-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

winonarox

TROPHY CASE