Call her doctor

I should have been more specific. Find a time when she’s not doing anything urgent, tell her it’s time to call the doctor, pick up her phone and dial the doctor, put them on speaker and put the phone down next to you while you body double your partner as they gone through the motions of locking in the appointment.

While on the phone your partner can also give third party authorisation. It’s the first thing I do when I meet a new provider, I give third party authorisation to my partner and mother so they can make appointments on my behalf (they can’t get results for me, but they can schedule things for me)

Call her doctor, make an appointment, save it in her calendar, remind her in the lead up, drive her there, get the referral. Walk her to the post box to send it off, sit next to her to phone the intake office to confirm they got the referral, set appointments on her phone for every 6 months to sit with her and call to check the cancellation list until you get an appointment. Drive her to that appointment.

If she has ADHD, the steps involved in getting a diagnosis are bigger than Mt Everest, she will need a neurotypical Sherpa.

Like how we can reCORD some music and release a a REcord

Or make some COMpost by putting those scraps in the comPOST

Is it a dialect training class? Because otherwise that feels like boarderline racism to penalise someone for having a different an accent.

“Da ta” vs “date-ah” is regional. If you’re pronouncing it “wrong” move across the pond and suddenly you’ll be right.

Technically they took Aotearoa in the name of Zeeland.

Red meat and nitrate salts are still not great. It’s not as bad as the internet wellness influencers say it is, but if your other option for breakfast is oatmeal, then bacon is a bad choice for heart health.

But if your other option is breakfast sausage, then yeah, bacon isn’t too bad of an option.

There are certain aspects of ADHD that would be disordered in any societal structure.

I have been so hyperfixated on something that I have been completely oblivious to my own body’s signals. As a result I have had accidents, developed UTIs, ended up in the ER with electrolyte imbalances, and dislocated several joints.

ADHD and joint Hypermobility are closely linked and while more studies are needed to understand exactly why and how, a lot of people with ADHD also meet criteria for Hypermobility spectrum disorders. In my case, I’ll be focused on a task and I won’t realise I’m clenching my jaw too firmly until the sudden sensation of undeniable pain sweeps over me and I realise my jaw has dislocated. Or ill be struggling with transitioning from a task to a rest, even though my knees are in agony, I can’t seem to force myself to stop.

ADHD is also inherently linked to circadian rhythm disorders, and while yes, delayed sleep phase disorder is only truly a disorder if you’re forcing yourself into a 9-5 lifestyle, ADHD sleep issues are more than just the shifting of the phases. A lot of people with ADHD will describe the sensation of sleep as being “passing out”, because of the way our brains (fail to) regulate dopamine, the way serotonin and melatonin is secreted to create drowsiness is also impacted.

I don’t get tired or sleepy, I get headaches and blurred vision and spasms in my back, and then I know that I can fall asleep if I lie down. I take sublingual melatonin tincture (I find it works better than tablets) and it’s such a strange phenomenon because about 15 minutes after I take it I feel my eyes are heavy and my body is calm and my mind ia slower, aka, sleepy. I don’t experience that without the help of supplements.

And sure there’s the argument that you “people with ADHD used to be on night watch duty”, but sleep deprived people make shit guards. If I’m not physically able to fall asleep until I’m “overtired”, and if being tired makes my ADHD symptoms worse, then I’m no good for anything.

It’s also not like hyperfixations are a super power (God I hate that way of framing things) I can’t choose when or why they happen. If I could, I’d be good at just job, instead, I’m loosing all sensation in my feet because I’m stuck in a fixation trying to pick at the skin on my thighs because I spotted one single ingrown hair while I had my pants down sitting on the toilet. Now it’s 40 minutes later, my alarm is going off in the other room, and I’m frozen, unable to transition away from this task.

ADHD is a spectrum, and for many people there are strengths, but it’s most definitely a disorder and for a lot of people, even if we lived in the most utopian ADHD friendly society, there are still internal issues to face.

For the record, I am uneducated and always have been due to a heart condition, so maybe my view on the condition would change if I had different treatment and management options available to me.

Sometimes it’s great having life threatening allergies - my whole life I’ve never trusted food that anyone else has made, I have perfected the art of the polite rejection.

I see things like kitchen sink spaghetti, dishwasher fish, and now dishwasher toilet brush, and I look back at how I’ve coincidentally dodged all those bullets.

(Growing up, in my house “kitchen sink spaghetti” was sometimes also called “crisper drawer pasta”, it was all the wilted, sad vegetables that had been neglected in the fridge. Chopped, roasted, pureed, and served on pasta… No actual sink involved, we just called it kitchen sink spaghetti because it contained “everything except for the kitchen sink”…so learning that some people genuinely use the bare sink to drain pasta - and not just for click bait and views was disgusting eye opening)

Thank you, British and Irish Islands seems like it would be more easily understood by the general populous. When I hear South Eastern Icelandic Archipelago, I get a bit geographically turned around because I’m an idiot and I picture Iceland near Greenland which is near Canada, and I picture Ireland near England which is near France, so in my tiny brain Ireland and Iceland are a whole ocean apart (even though paleo-geographically, it’s the same soil)

Right, like the majority of my millennial friends also work to live, not live to work, it’s just that living is so damn expensive that after we’re done working enough to pay rent, there’s not many hours left in the week to live.

I’m incredibly privileged. I have no debt, no loans, and housemates to split bills with. I only do 20 hours of paid work per week, and my hourly rate is pretty damn decent for my industry (I’m a coordinator in a community centre, I make $32AUD an hour).

I enjoy my work life balance and I wouldn’t have it any other way, I have time to care for my chronic illness properly, and time for friends, and family, and to volunteer in my community for passion projects that could never in a million years pay the bills.

But being in your mid thirties and splitting rent with other people is tough, I fortunately don’t want marriage or kids, but I can’t see how I’d make it work if I did, babies can’t help me split the rent, and most housemates don’t want to live with a crying baby that isn’t theirs.

So when my friend leaves his fun job for a grind company we know sucks our your soul, but it pays 8x as much and it’s “just for 2 years until the deposit is saved for and the baby is born” then it’s completely understandable why the next 24 months of my friends life is consumed with work. Because he needs that work now, so that he can live later.

But 2 years becomes 5 years becomes 10 years because first it’s the GFC, then it’s the housing bubble, then it’s the mini recession, then it’s covid, now it’s whatever the fuck times were living in.

And at some point for millennials (and many younger Gen X’ers) living became surviving and we work to survive, we don’t even know what thriving looks like.

Makes sense, as a geographical location I imagine it has had many names over history based on who controls the narrative. Can I ask what other names there are for the area that isn’t supportive of British colonialism?

Oh, I think I miscommunicated. I like receiving calls. If someone wants to ask me a question and talk to me, they can physically talk to me, instead of texting me and demanding the same level of attention from a text as they would expect from a real time conversation.

If they call and I don’t answer they know I’m busy and to try again later. If I call and do answer, it’s easy to say “hey, I gotta make this quick” or “I’m not doing anything, let’s have a chat” which is harder to do via text. It makes it easier to lay out the expectation for the interaction. If someone is texting me thinking we’re going to be having a long text based chat like we’re both sitting down in a live chat forum for the evening, but I’m busy and only occasionally looking at my phone because I don’t treat text like it’s AOL/MSN/IM, we’re going to have a bad time. But if they call me, then it’s just easier.

I’m using sync at the moment, I don’t dislike it but there is room for improvement. I have very low accessibility needs. I have palsies in my hands so for me it’s about having nice big icons to tap, because I don’t have the dexterity to push tiny text links or really cramped hit boxes.

My phone GUI is enlarged and sync is just the first third party app I found that scaled well with my phone, most third party apps work for me, it’s just the reddit official app that really, really doesn’t. It’s unreadable with my GUI settings.

Britain is historically just England and Wales, though colloquially now used as a shorter way of saying “Great Britain”, which is England, Wales, and Scotland.

The British isles is England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (and all the smaller islands like the Hebrides, Orkneys, etc)

Hmm, should I try getting it a fourth time? 😂

I managed to avoid it until Jan 2023 when I was hit the first time. Completely asymptomatic, I would have had no idea I was infected if it wasn’t for the fact I RAT/lat flow tested twice weekly because of my job.

Recovered fine, didn’t have any lingering symptoms.

Then in May I started getting a bit run down, my lymphnodes around my neck and jaw were really swollen and inflamed, and I was chronically congested, but not with any mucus or anything, just felt like my sinuses were swollen shut, and in the first week of June I had my second covid infection, still mostly asymptomatic, no cough or anything, just fatigue and headaches.

The headache never really went away. I’ve had chronic headaches my whole life due to arthritis in my neck, but this was different, more pressure and in a different location.

In September I got Covid again, and since then I have felt so crook. Migraines almost every week, moderate headaches every day from the moment I’ve wake up to the moment I pass out from exhaustion. The fatigue never went away but I can’t sleep anymore. I’ll lie in bed for hours but only get ~4 hours sleep a day, sometimes I’ll get 8 hours but in multiple naps. I’m thirsty all the time and can’t quench it, but I’m not really peeing at all, even less than usual despite drinking more water. Some days I can’t keep food down, some days food goes straight through me, there’s no middle ground. My lymphnodes are still swollen and now it’s all over my body, not just in my jaw and neck. I’ve had sinus bradycardia since September and dyspnoea (feeling like I need to yawn but can’t, like the air in my lungs isn’t getting in deep enough), and my nose bleeds every morning.

I’ve seen my doctor 8 times since June, basic tests have been run and all they can say is “it’s stress and long covid”

Im fucking sick of it. I’ve had to drastically reduce my hours (and pay) at work, and I miss my friends and all the fun active things I used to do.

I’m still managing to get by, but I wish I had a better understanding of why I feel the way I feel. “long covid” feels just as useless as no diagnosis at all.

Exactly, I didn’t have a tantrum. I used a third party app because of the accessibility features it offered that the official app doesn’t. I can’t use reddit now, so I don’t use reddit.

Litteraly everyone I know will call me for questions that could easily be a text because they know that on average it takes me 2 days to reply - and that’s if I reply at all!

My phone calls are all 5 seconds or less “hey Dilly, are you free Saturday for lunch at ours?” “yeah sounds good” “okay bye”

Saturday is 5 days away, could that have been a text? Yes. But I probably would have only seen it on Sunday if they’d texted me.

I can’t drive because I’m visually impaired. I know I’m too visually impaired to drive because I can’t even grocery shop properly with my shit eyesight - with a basket, let alone pushing a trolley!

But I pass the eye exams they make you take before you get a license and ive double checked with my optometrist and yes, my vision score is within the legal limits to drive as long as I wear my glasses… It’s baffling, because I absolutely should not be driving! I can’t see shit!

So I don’t drive.

When I say “I’m too blind to drive” some people ask if I can just lie about my vision and fake my way through, because “you really need a licence” and when I explain I can legally get a licence I just don’t, for everyone’s safety, they act like I’m being a selfish child for not doing the adult thing and getting my licence. Just because it can doesn’t mean I should.

I do cycle, pedalling a 20kg frame of metal at 15km/h on a bike path feels a lot safer than driving a 1 tonne hunk of metal at 80km/h on a highway. Without my bike I’d be pretty fucked in terms of my independence and being able to do what needs to be done as an adult. Fortunately my vision isn’t degenerative.

But in the last 5 years, especially since 2020 covid locksdowns, I feel like there are more people on the road that shouldn’t be. There’s just a huge increase in the frequency of “silly mistakes” - people swerving into the bike lane without looking to avoid a speed bump, people running a red turn signal because they’re looking at the green straight signal, people merging lanes at dangerously low speeds, no one putting their headlights on in the rain, everyone forgetting to indicate, people stopping more abruptly instead of slowing and anticipating a stop sign, and my personal favourite, everyone cutting corners in residential areas like they’re a formula 1 driver, just turning into the oncoming traffic of the street they’re turning into.

This is why I love my current job and my friendship group’s. In both circles “I didn’t do that because I’ve been struggling with my ADHD” is a completely valid reason.

I mean, at work it’s followed by a short “what do we do to get over that hurdle?” because obviously I can’t just, not do my job.

But at least I’m not having to make shit up, and I can actually get to the root of the problem (being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world) and address it. Even if addressing it is just my boss giving me a fake deadline to put the pressure on the task.

But are those like a hot coffee dispenser, where you grab a cup and put it under a spout, push a button and it pours out a hot drink? Because we do have those in Australia.

But in Japan they have vending machines for canned drinks and cans of soup that are heated.