• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Making It Up

as we go along

  • Home education: facts and contacts.
  • About me/contact.
    • Privacy Policy
    • Affiliate links and disclosure policy.
    • Read52 – the challenge and the books.
  • Cookie Policy (UK)

Managing hashimotos, sciatica, anxiety and depression while autistic.

4th November 2018 by Jax Blunt 2 Comments

When I wrote my cheery reintroduction post the other day, it felt like I ignored a pretty big elephant in the room. This is the other side of me, the bit that I don’t usually brag about.

It’s hard to know how far to go back with all of this. And this isn’t a pity party post, I’m writing about this in the hope that the information is useful to some one. It took a while to diagnose most of my conditions, and I’d love to shortcut someone else to the answers they need.

My autism was diagnosed a few years back, and the story of that is sprinkled through the blog under the autism tag. (I’ll stitch it all together in a page tomorrow.) It’s not a medical condition, but it does affect access to medical help. Doctors underestimate pain if you don’t express it in the standard way, I hate talking on the phone and our GP surgery is all phone appointments these days.

Which is partly why it took so long last year to get myself to the GP for help. I thought it was a resurgence of the depression I’ve dealt with on and off all my life, despite me doing all the right things – exercise, creative stuff, eating well, all of it.

And the doctor assumed the same, and put me on antidepressants.

I didn’t feel any better. I felt a whole lot worse. I started to develop a tremor which meant I couldn’t take photographs or draw. Then it got so my muscles would fatigue when doing normal stuff, the real crowning joy being the time I had to call Tim to meet me at the supermarket round the corner (seriously a 3 minute walk) because my arms gave up and I couldn’t carry the couple bags of shopping home.

The year before I’d been having physio for my chronic every joint problem. If it’s not one thing it’s all of them. And the physio pushed for a whole battery of blood tests and that time it was a vitamin D deficiency. So I wondered if it was that again, or side effects from the anti depressants. But the doctor suspected hyperthyroidism and did yet more blood tests.

Turned out in hypothyroid, and tested positive for antibodies, which means I have Hashimotos. ‘The silver lining,’ said the GP over the phone ‘is that you get free prescriptions for life. But you have to take thyroxine daily.’

Once I’d got that established I got a different GP to prescribe a withdrawal dose for the anti depressants, and guess what, the tremor went too.

GPs are supposed to have protocol to deal with autistic patients, to be more accessible, because we’re really bad, generally speaking, at pushing ourselves forward and getting the health care we need. Mine set up a couple appointments so I didn’t have to do the phone thing, then he stopped and now I’m back to not going in again.

And it’s November, I still can’t run (hip and back, that’s a whole other story) and I can feel myself slipping again.

I’ve got a pain clinic appointment tomorrow. I’m hoping for some answers about how to strengthen my back so that I can work towards running. I’ve started a gratitude journal, and every day it’s sunny I’m out with my camera. It helps, but I don’t know if it will be enough.

Tweet

Filed Under: autism, It's where it is Tagged With: #BEDN, anxiety, autism, autistic, BEDN, hashimotos

About Jax Blunt

I'm the original user, Jax Blunt I've been blogging for 16 years, give or take, and if you want to know me, read me :)

Oh, and if you'd like to support my artistic endeavours, shop my photographs and art at redbubble

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Susan Mann says

    6th November 2018 at 12:24 pm

    I am with you on the capturing sunsets and skies, they always improve my mood. I am sorry to hear you have gone through so much. That sucks. I am glad the tremor is away though. Hope the pain clinic can help x

    Reply
    • Jax Blunt says

      7th November 2018 at 2:02 pm

      I’m a bit fed up of not feeling right, but a good sunset always helps.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

This site contains affiliate links.

Archives

Categories

Affiliate search on bookshop

Footer

Copyright © 2022 · Lifestyle Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimise our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
Preferences
{title} {title} {title}