The Autistic Me

I've been dealing with anemia for a few years. To help, I take an iron supplement, ferrous gluconate. I cannot take ferrous sulfate, which though more common has unpleasant side effects. You'd imagine an iron supplement would be a simple purchase. But, we've also thought it would be easy to locate a half dozen other items, too. My wife reminds me that these stores only carry the items that sell to 80 percent of customers. Anything in the unlucky 20 percent is a special order. Apparently, I'm in the 20 percent. A few months ago, I couldn't fill a prescription meant to reduce my blood loss. It was a "special order" that never arrived. Walmart called twice to apologize. I never did fill the prescription. Friday, the only local store with the over-the-counter iron I take was Kmart. Not even the two "drugstores" carry the iron pills. We will probably order online in the future. The old corner drugstore is a memory in most places. I remember go...

It's no secret I have a deep disdain for the mental health professions, based on my personal experiences and observations. My work with families and students also reinforces my suspicions that too many support professionals don't understand the autistic experience, including those professionals supposedly specializing in autism. My most recent blog entry on the topic was: Autism Therapies and The Autistic Individual http://theautisticme.blogspot.com/2011/06/autism-therapies-and-autistic.html One of the readers of my blog sent a note that included the following: "Your experiences were in the 1970s and 80s. Things have changed. You don't know what is done now for autistics." My last individual appointment with a counselor specializing in autism was in late November 2006. That is not ancient history. I also had a follow-up evaluation in early 2007 during which the psychiatrist was condescending, critical, and inattentive to anything I was trying to explain to her. (I...

On another online site, a parent of a "recovering" child with autism pointedly claimed that those of us who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders as adults are somehow not genuine. Among the comments posted to Left Brain/Right Brain ( http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/ ): How does it just dawn on somebody they are on the spectrum??? How do others that are older decide they are on the spectrum??? Schools won't even take real diagnostics so none of the self made Adult Asperger's have any real claim to anything but a way to put down what helped my child to not be on the list of who you're searching for. The thread, both on LB/RB and as carried on elsewhere, is appalling. A parent actually had the gall to message me that I was not actually disabled, but was instead hiding behind the cover of autism to shill for the government and big medicine. This person argues that anyone speaking, traveling, blogging, and conducting research can't possibly have a "s...

The following mixes and matches several quite different groups, confounding people that represent various political views -- not a monolithic anti-government movement, but general skepticism: The Very Angry Tea Party By J.M. BERNSTEIN http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/the-very-angry-tea-party/ In a bracing and astringent essay in The New York Review of Books, pointedly titled "The Tea Party Jacobins," Mark Lilla argued that the hodge-podge list of animosities Tea party supporters mention fail to cohere into a body of political grievances in the conventional sense: they lack the connecting thread of achieving political power. It is not for the sake of acquiring political power that Tea Party activists demonstrate, rally and organize; rather, Lilla argues, the appeal is to "individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service of neutralizing, not using, political power." He calls Tea Party activists a "libertarian mob...

There are times when nothing makes sense. The universe, despite its patterns, seems random, chaotic, and even cruel. Yet, reality simply is. We can study statistics, predict possible outcomes, develop complex models for nearly every contained system… yet on the personal level those models are useless. We can predict that one person of every thousand contracts a given disease, a numeric formula safely separating the person from the calculation. Risk management, economics, and various sciences step in for the analysis. Everyone involved digests the numbers and accepts them as theoretical models. Yet the model is meaningless to the statistic… that one person. Parents hear statistics and worry. Contexts are often missing, especially comparison to other statistics. How dangerous is something, really, when compared to other risks? We know travel by car is very dangerous, but it is familiar. We worry about the unusual, the strange. In 2004, 27 children died in cribs according to th...

The thing I want most... sleep. I want at least a routine cycle of sleep, regardless of the hours. Instead, I sleep randomly and it annoys me. I'm exhausted much of the time when I am awake. To sleep... perchance to dream! I spent the last few hours learning about a database tool. I experiment with technology when I cannot sleep. Really, I should be writing or focusing a lot more on other projects. I have a long enough list of projects that nothing new should be allowed. I need a lot more focus when I am awake. The "ADD/ADHD" label enters my mind at these hours. What if the diagnosis of ADD/ADHD was correct years ago? Was I any more or less productive with that label? With the medications? I don't remember. Too many things I do not remember. I want focus. I want to finish projects.

Not even two months into the year and I am exhausted. I'm possibly the most exhausted I have been since moving to Minnesota. It is the mix of university nonsense, cold weather, aching body, renovation disorder, and so forth. When one of our "kids" became ill Monday night, it was one more thing on my mind. My kids are the closest friends I have, and I need friends right now. The university nightmare continues. I never felt like I belonged here, so having issues with any faculty member only intensifies the alienation. It isn't that I want to be liked or want to be friends with anyone here — but I definitely do not want to be disliked. I have a lot of anger and disappointment as I feel the university hasn't been very accepting of me. I mainly want to be left alone, allowed to work. Physically, I am shaking more often than I have in the past year. I shake violently at night, when I should be sleeping. I tremor and cramp, especially my right arm. The pain i...

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...

Many of the postings to blogs, bulletin boards, forums, and other forms of online expression I have read seem to reflect serious depression. Leaving aside the question of does online use cause depression or reflect it, I sense the postings do reveal a problem experienced by many HFA/AS individuals. When people gather and complain, it might be that each new posting is simply venting. There is a sense that if others can complain, so can I. But I believe it is much deeper for autistic individuals. How can you not be depressed at time when social connections are difficult? How can you not wonder what it is like to understand vocal tones and facial expressions without having to memorize pages from books on body language? How can you not feel isolated when so many people avoid you? Put simply, when your social skills are the ones most affected by your disability, it is only logical that you will suffer some periods of depression related to the isolation we experience. Ever...

There are people I consider mental health hypochondriacs. They read a list of "symptoms" and self-diagnose themselves with everything from attention deficits to autism disorders. If there's a way to excuse a lack of success, self-control, organization, healthy relationships, and general contentment, these people will find it in a book or on a Web site. Worse, we have parents and teachers labeling students in ways that might end up doing real harm to future generations. I'll offer the standard disclaimer: I do believe there are disorders and conditions affecting a lot of students. I also admit that some might be more common than in the past — might be, but not necessarily are. What qualifies me to say this? Aren't I being a hypocrite if I'm accepting the label of "autistic" and writing about my experiences? Blunt answer: I was seriously injured during birth. I do not doubt my medical history is being overlaid with current trends in psyc...