Will we ever change the status quo in the US?

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No, when I say effective loss of my hearing and sight it was through what medical science describes as the worst pain known to mankind, per type two trigeminal neuralgia.

If you can imagine having your teeth drilled without novocain and the pain being in your right eye and ear instead, that is about as close to describing it as I can for a potential perspective of someone who does not experience it might understand, except for me, it was constant and unrelenting for 5 VERY VERY long years, without relief during all waking hours.

To put it in perspective the greatest joy I had during those years was when an ophthalmologist put some screws in my tear ducts for another unrelated physical illness per Sjorgren's syndrome where my eyes quit making tears. It took my mind off the other pain for one split second of relative human heaven, at that point, and only at that point in time.

The second best experience was when a beloved cat died, and I managed to squeeze out one tear, for feeling something, anything at that time with complete numbness of emotions as well.

Now to be clear of course none of this is related directly to Autism; however, the chronic social stress of the extreme responsibilities of my government job, is directly related to what seems to be all 19 disorders I accumulated to that point of disability as none of them existed before the stress and in effect and affect none of them exist now after 5 long years of recuperation from that chronic stress.

My doctors tend to agree that the chronic impact of stress before those 5 years of ALMOST total shut-in disability that lasted from about the year 1997 to 2007, all together, taken into consideration, is what eventually almost killed me.

So basically as a whole, but not specifically all, SOME Autistic folks are like canaries in the coal mine of this culture in all the complexity that exists of it, as far as I can see now.

And yeah, to have been Helen Keller would have been a relief of amazing proportions then, but nah, of course not now, with the recovery that no doctor gave me a chance in hell to gain at my lowest point.

Stress is bad news, and sometimes it's hard to give up to escape it.

But to give up is always better than dying in my opinion now, as far as quitting a challenge of work that is impossible to do, although I dam sure wanted to do it per death really bad for many years, for GOOD REASON, during the disability, AS TRULY there are things worse in life than death, beyond even what most people conceive of what the word broken can possibly mean. :)

And for the naysayers all I can say is I would not wish parts of my life on even the devil if the devil truly literally existed....

Yeah, I think I have the cognitive empathy NOW of 14.5 billion years, if that IS possible.....per metaphor of course....

Do you experience pain right now?

Absolutely zero pain.

Additionally, during the disability it was determined that I was born with a congenitally fused T-6 vertebrae in my neck that led to early onset severe degenerative osteoarthritis in my neck and spinal stenosis that was also excruciating pain from onset of all waking hours.

Additionally, during the disability I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia per pain all over my body, and dysautonomia where my blood pressure and heart rate would no longer work as properly controlled by my brain and nervous system through the most basic of autonomic function. I could not walk around the block or even eat a meal without almost passing out. And a condition I suffered from named coat hanger pain was part of that too.

And nah, that's not nearly all of it, but it is the most challenging parts of the illness and disability I did incur.

Human potential is what my life is all about, NOW, and the things that I document that I can do with the power of positive faith, belief, will, HOPE, courage, AND POSITIVE CHANGE having absolutely no requirement to be associated with any religion are REAL, AND I HAVE THE EVIDENCE THAT PROVES THAT AS REAL.

Considering I am 54 years old and can press 810LBS with my legs, dance walk a mix of martial arts and ballet style dance walking 2800 miles in 16 months, and lead a dance solo among 20 something year olds at one of the top 100 dance clubs in the U.S. going on 39 weeks now, is considered AWESOME ALL BY ITSELF BY THE Onlookers who have no idea I went to LITERAL HUMAN HELL for five years first or even know my age for that matter, as many folks estimate me in my 30's after watching me do what I CAN DO in real life, NOW.

It's too complicated even to discuss this, per all the challenges I have surpassed, FULLY in real VERBAL life, as spell checker doesn't even know how to spell many of the disorders I was diagnosed with, SO OF course most people have no idea what I am talking about when I use all the relatively rare medical terms either, in real life. :)

If I could have found just one person online who had successfully recovered from TYPE TWO TRIGEMINAL NEURALGIA AS I DID COME ACROSS SOME TYPE ONE FOLKS WHO experience it acutely and intermittently, it would have given me a spark of hope I really needed to get by in life better at that time.

So yeah, I talk about it whenever I have the chance, as perhaps there is another 1 in a million out there, in the reading audience who has long since given up.

And beyond that there have been discussions on this website where some folks think a person is gonna be old and useless by the time they reach 50 and life won't be any fun or worth living.

One thing for sure is, I prove that myth wrong everyday now. Statistics on human health and aging in this country is based on the norm of a society that is functionally disabled, overall, by the comforts of culture per declining physical intelligence.

If one take care of themselves, IN PARTICULAR SUCCESSFULLY MANAGING STRESS, they need not believe that statistic of mall sitters in their 40's and 50's. :)

Eastern philosophies have already proven this true for thousands of years, through the 'medicine' of MOVEMENT THERAPY and finally science TG, is beginning to catch up.

Smiles, and Happy Holidays to ya..:)

Sounds swell to me.

I've heard about the pain of neuralgia.

There are times when I write like Whitman--like you do. These days, I feel rather Emily Dickensian, or Hemingway-like.

I'm glad you could now occupy your mind with substantive things.

Enjoy your holidays!

The DSM promotes the unfortunate myth that ASD is merely behavioural. This view obscures the physical/ medical issues that affect so many on the spectrum and influences doctors to treat ASD people with multiple issues as hypochondriac NTs. Autism profoundly affects the physical body in many cases, diminished immunity, auto-immunity, allergic and inflammatory syndromes, thyroid disorders, coeliac and other digestive serious disorders - these and many others are all raised in incidence signficantly for the ASD population, though individual variation occurs (of course).

It saddens me that the DSM continues to enable psychiatrists to monopolise in the way they have done and push the mental disease paradigm of ASD. I am very cynical about their reasons for doing so. The higher suicide rate for ASD would lessen perhaps if we stopped letting it be listed in the DSM bible of mental disease (precursor to psychiatric income and continued business..) and channeling people into unnecessary further stigma. The ASD stigma and the Pyschiatric patient stigma is a double whammy that is doing harm to our community. That's my view and we need to get real about that..

Actually, I think that topic needs to be a thread of its own.. the "treated like hypochondriac NTs instead of ASDs with systematic medical issues" topic - for 2015 maybe?

I am slowly losing my vision due to macular degeneration. Hopefully it will be slow enough that I will reach my expiry date first. Have had a lot of issues with vision, detached retinas, extreme astigmatism, red eye, myopia, et al all my life. Whether there are links to ASD is a topic I haven't yet explored.. my guess is that there are probably significant links.

At school I couldn't read anything on the blackboard, so I memorised everything the teachers said instead. This worked for me and the bonus was that it developed my memory skills tremendously. However things got much harder for me when I started doing trigonometry, etc, where the equations needed to be read off the board - I developed other ways of learning that did serve me well, though the teachers couldn't understand my curious abilities at all (though they respected them) and I wouldn't disclose my visual problems because kids with glasses got picked on. I did get 99% in the advanced maths papers, and that was more due I think to the self-learning methods I developed than any innate ability (could have been a mixture though). Can't do advanced maths now, it's just atrophied away over the decades of non-use..

Thanks and if you ever self publish on a blog.. please let me know.. as i am always interested in hearing the art of another mind..:)

Actually, the Director of the National Institutes of Mental Health is going this direction in Autism research on the disease model per co-morbid associated factors.

There are almost an unlimited number of causal factors that can culminate in the behavioral deficit model of Autism that currently exists and the problem with that is not many truly effective solutions per the generalized abstract concept that is currently Autism.

Tom Insel, the Director, seems to know better, and he has the clout to get things done, and the government by far is THE major funding source for Autism Research, as per total amount funded for comparison purposes Autism Speaks only funded 4% of the research as reported in 2010, by the Inter-Agency Autism Committee.

My sister is diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and she is following a similar general life pattern that I followed per chronic stress followed by a diagnosis of the immune system disorder Sjorgren's Syndrome but her's is not in remission and unfortunately she is still tied down to her current job for at least another year, and will like have to find another one to make ends meet after retiring from that one.

Adapting to Autism often gets better with age, but the physical problems that do seem to come as a result of that adaptation, at least in part, can be catastrophic, and that is no overstatement at all.

The following thread written here on what many folks describe as Autistic Burnout that can occur at a younger age or older age, when chronic social stress takes its physical toll, is both valuable information and potential advice for folks that have not arrived in that challenging place yet, and I hope they will not for their sake.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=153352

And here is my part that I wrote about a couple of years back, before I recovered.

http://katiemiaaghogday.blogspot.com/2013/04/burnout-on-autism-spectrum.html

And additionally, here is research associated with how diverse the potential causal factors for Autism is.

http://katiemiaaghogday.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-problem-of-determining-who-is.html

Thanks for those - I am going to have a big read tonight after the last of the food etc shopping today.

Forgot to add another curious thing about my vision stuff - the two strokes I had were both in the visual cortex area of the brain, which is uncommon. Fortunate though as I escaped the terrible paralysis and loss of speech that afflicts so many. My vision was unchanged once I recovered (though during the strokes I had double vision and also experienced sudden and total loss of vision with no prior warning, which was temporary thank goodness). These are symptoms of a stroke that people are just not told about, and I went to four different doctors before the 4th one diagnosed correctly what had happened and rushed me to hospital. The others gave me the "hypochondriac NT" treatment. So I have some street cred in that area...!

I get the feeling your smarts offset the effects of your strokes.

Research should be done which addresses whether recent substantive intellectual activity offsets the effects of stroke.

There has been some impressive research quite recently on stroke recovery, along those lines.

Yes, I can relate, as it took the doctors two years to diagnosis the type two trigeminal neuralgia and until then everyone pooh poohed it and just said pull up your bootstraps; however, they couldn't see the 'dentist drill bit' in my eye and ear.

Invisible disabilities are particularly hard, as on can get the pain and disability and the shame all the same.

What I learned from that is I have to be my own best friend and parent if I am going to get by in this life, in the long run, as sooner or later many of us face it ALL alone anyway.

I hope for your recovery and best wishes to you. :)

And Happy Holidays as well. :)

I often get aggravated at people who complain about someone parking in a disabled parking space with no obvious disability. Some people even think that the only disabilities for which someone should have a disabled permit are for people who are in a wheelchair.

Cognitive empathy is often learned through experience as opposed to affective empathy.

And people in our culture are conditioned to believe that skin and clothes deep is all there is, particularly at a younger age.

When one lives long enough, one would hope folks would learn more about the life of others but truly I think there are some folks who rarely give the feelings of other folks a second thought, when they cannot feel similar feelings themselves.

If a person looks good in our culture for some folks that IS ALL THAT COUNTS; BUT LITTLE do they know that is no part of true happiness at all.

That's the Karma part that comes back to bite many folks in the 'butt' of life, sooner or later, as simply the natural potential and progress of life.

I always keep in mind now, be careful how one treats folks one on the way up, as one day those folks one does not treat with respect may be changing one's bed pan or diapers, and potentially yes, even at a young age, as disability is an equal opportunity condition in life, for those who think they are invincible when young.

Cognitive Empathy, is perhaps the most important human attribute but the least respected AND PRACTICED one now, overall, in western society, as a whole, at least, in what I see about it now, as compared to decades past in the U.S.

AND additionally, there is research that suggests that college age adults over the course of the last several decades show deficits in previous empirical measures of empathy, at the tune of 30 percent.

Not surprising at all to me, as I find some dogs express more cognitive empathy than humans, presently, and maybe even a cat or two, too. :)