The Autistic Me

I recently spoke at the Autism Society of Minnesota. It was a good experience, overall, and I think the audience enjoyed the presentation. When I speak, I never know how well things went, but my wife noticed the comments people made because she was sitting in the audience. AuSM has graciously asked me to repeat the presentation at their annual convention. The AuSM 2008 Annual Convention will be in Minneapolis, April 30 through May 3. I look forward to having a larger audience before I travel to Orlando for the national ASA conference. When I speak to a audience of parents and teachers, I feel like I'm making a genuine difference. When I sit and write, I'm never sure that others are affected. Despite being nervous when speaking, there's a real sense of connection during a presentation.

At the start of every semester, I suffer from extreme anxiety. I dislike learning how new classes will function. I also have a general distaste for classes that seem to repeat the same basic themes and topics. As a graduate student in any given field, the primary figures in the field and the major works are mention again and again and again. I'm tired of hearing the same basic notions. It is hard for me to remain on task when I am so bored. The problem with being bored is that I end up either working on other projects during class or I end up speaking up and giving my opinions too often. Like so many ASD individuals, I feel like I want to rush the courses along. Tell me something exciting to me. Interest me. Instead, I had a professor talking about writing paragraphs tonight. I'm nearly 40 years old. I know the "composition" paragraph style calls for a topic, some supporting data, and a conclusion. Yes, I get it. And I still think it is stupid. That's ...

This coming weekend is supposed to remain below 0F, with some areas of Minnesota experiencing a windchill of -50F or worse. Sponsors have cancelled a major skiing competition due to safety concerns. It was deemed too cold for ice sculptors to work on the famous Winter Carnival attractions in St. Paul. It's cold... even for Minnesota. Cold is painful. Very painful. Even indoors, my joints ache. My skin itches and burns from the low humidity. Outside, I have to wear gloves and hats, which I hate — as readers already know. I've tried lotions, but they bother me. It's a sensation I dislike intensely, the slick oily nature of lotions. When I don't use the lotions, I end up with bleeding around my fingertips, the skin splitting along the ridges of my fingerprints. I can't explain why, but I hate lotion so much that bleeding is almost better. Spring cannot come soon enough. When I read about SAD, I don't quite get the "sunlight" issue. I don't ...

This is a rant, based on exchanges elsewhere… One of the unavoidable aspects of writing and speaking publicly about autism is that I am certain to offend someone with nearly every sentence I type or speak. I have been told I don't know "anything at all" about autism or its affects on a family. Let's be very clear: I am officially diagnosed as "high-functioning autistic" and have been "evaluated" (studied? examined?) by neurologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Even though I don't like labels, in this case it is not merely a label but a qualification that I believe gives me some authority to say, "Here is what I experienced." I do not pretend to know any universal truths about how autism is experienced by individuals, nor do any of the experts I know. I can only write and speak to my own experiences. Obviously, being able to write and speak publicly is a gift not shared by every individual with a developmenta...

I am scheduled to speak at a workshop sponsored by the Autism Society of Minnesota on January 23, in St. Paul. If anyone cares to meet me and hear me ramble about university students with autism spectrum disorders, this is a good opportunity. (Visit http://www.ausm.org for more information.) The Autism Society of America has also invited me to conduct one of their 75-minute conference sessions at the 39th Annual ASA National Convention. This event will be in Orlando July 9-12. I'll post more details once I know the date and time of my conference session. (Visit http://www.autism-society.org for more information on ASA.) As always, I do my best to meet individually with parents, teachers, and students to offer whatever advice / insights I can.

Today the media are reporting an analysis of autism rates in California since the removal of thimerosal from most vaccines. The autism rate, or more accurately the rate of diagnoses, is still climbing in the state. Study challenges drug's role in autism By Jia-Rui Chong, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 5:15 PM PST, January 7, 2008 The prevalence of autism in California children continued to rise after many vaccine manufacturers started to remove the mercury-based preservative thimerosal in 1999, suggesting that the chemical was not a primary cause of the disorder, according to a study released Monday. The analysis found that from 2004 to 2007, when exposure to thimerosal dropped significantly for 3- to 5-year-olds, the rate continued to increase in that group from 3.0 to 4.1 per 1,000 children. "If mercury exposure in vaccines was a major cause of autism, then the number of ... affected kids should have diminished once they were no longer exposed to thimerosal," said Dr...