Comments on: Don’t just hand me things.

By: Andrea S.

Andrea S. — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:36:40 +0000

VioletYoshi,

If I understand Amanda’s description of events correctly, I think the person did understand that Amanda needed to do one before the other. The difficulty is not “failure to understand the procedure” the difficulty seems to be that the person responsible for ensuring that Amanda does what she needs to do to care for her breathing every day didn’t fully grasp that asking Amanda to simply hold something without using it is an action that Amanda can’t do. Based on some things she has explained in other blog posts about how her brain is wired and how her body works, taking something she is accustomed to using tends to immediately trigger her to actually use it. It happens so automatically and so fast there’s no time for her conscious brain to interfere and decide, “wait, I need to just sit here holding this until after I can receive the other thing I need to use first.” She also has language processing issues that means someone telling her “could you please just hold this for a minute” may not necessarily register right away. And even if it did, it still wouldn’t be enough to override her automatic response to holding the concrete object in her hand.

What the workers need to do is NOT HAND HER THINGS until it is safe for Amanda to immediately USE the things they are handing her.

By: AnneC

AnneC — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:15:57 +0000

Something I’ve experienced a lot that seems like it might be related to this is, when doing something with an object (or set of objects), often I find it impossible to stop completing the process of whatever I’m doing in the middle and do something else. It’s more than just being “annoyed” with being interrupted, it’s like physically being locked into actions sometimes. E.g., if I am helping Matt with dinner, and I’m chopping a carrot (for instance), I will just chop until I run out of carrot even if someone is telling me to do something else. So I try to be very sure when I do something that there’s not going to be any need for me to be “on call” to do other stuff. That isn’t always feasible, though.

By: VioletYoshi

VioletYoshi — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:49:47 +0000

Maybe you could ask them to do something like mark your inhaler with 1, and mark the nebulizer machine with 2. So this way people who are new to the procedure know what they’re supposed to do.

By: Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:49:37 +0000

My comments on my own blog regularly end up in my spam folder. I have no idea why.

By: Henry Emrich

Henry Emrich — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:16:05 +0000

Amanda:

1. Which “mindspace” do you like more/feel better functioning in? The no-language pattern thing, or the language thing? Presumably, since you said it takes more effort to “be” in the language-use mindspace than the other one, it’s easier to do the other one?

2. Is auditory language use a different “thing” from writing, for you? If so, is it more “available” more often?
Maybe you could set up a system where people either write notes to you, or type stuff on your keyboard/voice-synth device? Maybe you’ll connect with it more easily, and not have stuff go bad.

To be honest, since I’m not autistic (at any rate, never been dx’ed as it) — my primary thing is the visual impairment, like I’ve mentioned before — it’s really difficult for me to relate to your experiences, and stuff.

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:46:53 +0000

And I know things are bad when the trackback generated by my own post ends up in the spam folder.