Random Thoughts Around Neurospiciness

A rainbow "color-picker" infinity symbol with the phrase
Why light it up blue... when we have a whole spectrum?

I was responding to a Facebook post about infantilizing autistic people and the evidently obsessive need of some adults to label autism (and other neuro stuff) with functioning or mental-age labels for ease of categorization.

I ended up writing a small novel on the topic, so I am copy-and-pasting it below:

I have a 15yo AuDHD daughter (I probably am as well, but they weren't calling it that in 1983 when I was tested).

She loves chaotic characters in her fantasy fiction, magnets, Minecraft, beading, knowing ridiculous amounts of FNaF lore, acrylic paint, her older sister, shucking corn, and showing off her encyclopedic knowledge of random trivia.

She hates being infantilized, people expecting her to keep up "because she doesn't look autistic," unrealistic expectations, adults not explaining why, and bigotry.

Are these because she's autistic? Or ADHD? Or fifteen years old? Or because we lost her father when she was eight? Or is she just a child of the 21st century? Who knows?

It's silly (and ableist) to put people in tiny little boxes to make it easier to categorize them, as though they were so many left-handed socket wrenches or something.

My motto - and that of her best teachers, thank goodness - is "Meet the kid where they are."

And also, please let them speak for themselves when they can. I mean, you can help them, support them, advocate for them... but it's about them, not about you.

This is Too Much

I am perhaps a bit on edge today because I just got a call that clearly came from my kid's high school and I actually started to cry. 

Out of sheer worry.

Because, you know, the world is falling apart and a bunch of people are more worried about whether a drag queen is reading Doctor Seuss to kids than whether the whole school gets shot up by a former student with a gun and a grudge.

"Hi, Ms. Kirkland, this is TeacherName from the SchoolName Social Studies department, and I have your name on a list of theme readers (note: folks who help teachers grade papers) and wondered if you have availability."

I don't, right now, but a simple call from a number I recognize should not inspire dread. He was very apologetic, and said he should have led with everything-is-fine, but he didn't know I was a parent for that school too.

The fact that they even think they should have to worry about that phrasing - I mean, he's not the school nurse in charge of my anaphylactic kiddo - being the first thing when they call a helper, is terribly disheartening.

Six Weeks Later (Knee)

A pale arm giving a thumbs-up

Knees with soft-tissue injuries are reputed to take four-to-six weeks to heal.

Just finished Week Six and it's considerably better, but it still has a ways to go. I'm off crutches, wearing the knee brace except in bed, and using a cane (and I have gotten quite good with the cane, actually). Still meeting my daily fitness goals per my Apple Watch, just hit my first hundred-day streak, and am now experienced enough with the thing to get irritated that it doesn't allow for things like knee injuries. Not in and of itself, anyway; I need to find an app for that.

Anyway, a follow-up appointment for my knee today. My blood pressure is down (yay!) even though I went off the extra BP medication earlier this week (I do not need a side effect of cough in the springtime when there's already asthma and alder pollen and all the covidness of it out there), and it appears that naproxen (Aleve) causes my BP to spike as well. So I went off both of those of my own volition (informed my doctor) and my BP is still okay. It's possible it was just quite high when I went in six weeks ago because of pain and white coat syndrome and my unreasoning-but-understandable hatred of Totem Lake near the hospital.

The knee is still swollen (doc called it an "effusion") more than it should be. This may be any number of things, but none of them are immediately or urgently harmful. So we're going to do about six weeks of physical therapy and recheck then to see how it's going. In the meantime, try this other NSAID, if it makes my BP spike then I go back to ibuprofen. Less of it than I'm taking now, by preference. Oh, and alternate ice and damp heat instead of just ice.

In other (related) news, my doc is very pleased with how much physical movement I'm getting in, even with the ouchie knee, and quite pleased with my adherence to protocols for things like meds and vitamins and the CPAP machine (and that I have quit coffee and cut way back on dairy and sodium). I am a compliant patient, enough so that when I nope out of something because of its particular side effects (:koff:lisinopril:koff: - literally) she pays attention. That's a mark of a good doctor, in my opinion; they don't just assume that Doctor Knows Best.

So, next steps: get a physical therapist (if my mom's PT takes my insurance I'll go there), get the Rx for the new NSAID (should be ready tomorrow), and find a gamified fitness app that focuses more on general movement than actual buffing or weight loss. If I can lose weight and/or buff up, fine, but for me the point here is to Move My Body.

Or, as my doctor put it, "Movement is Medicine."