Life, Sick And Autistic

I've always had interoception difficulties- I don't know that I need to pee, that I'm hungry, etc the way that others do. I've never had a medical professional explain it, but I'm pretty sure it's tied to my masking and Autism. After all, if I'm not supposed to express emotions, why would I be expressing other needs? Enough years of ignoring the signals made them fade to background noise, I guess. 

Saturday, I woke up in unusual levels of pain. When I went to the bathroom, I was passing more blood than urine, and I had to go more than every 5 minutes. 

The labs were dramatic- my red and white blood cells in my urine sample were both in the thousands, and the normal range was 0-2 or 0-5. The infection was all the way up into my kidneys, and I hadn't had any symptoms that would have pointed me in that direction, despite having had urinary tract infections on and off throughout my entire life. 

So my entire life has been rearranged for the month- I can't take some of my medications because they would interfere with the antibiotics, and I'm having to wake up even earlier than usual to take thyroid meds, wait half an hour, eat, then take antibiotics, so I stay on the every 12 hour schedule. 

Yesterday I missed my Adderall, it was too late to take it when I remembered, and ended up having a pretty severe Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria attack that sent me firmly into non-verbal territory. 

To top it off, it's July, very hot, and our home air conditioning unit hasn't been working well. The repair man is supposed to come out today, but kidney issues topped with bad heat does not make things better. 

I'm currently reading Unmasking Autism by Devon Price PHD. It may be the best Autism resource I've come across so far, and it's very focused on healing, instead of covering the history and politics of Autism. 

I'm working on the idea of being radically visible with my Autism, though I imagine this blog will remain anonymous, even then, as I cannot imagine no longer needing a safe place to rant about certain family members with gross attitudes to myself and other Autistic people within the family. There's at least one I would like to brainwash into having empathy already. 

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