Medical Appointments #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. This week has once again been quite stressful. I mentioned several reasons already in my post on Thursday, but with respect to those, I still have hope. Unfortunately, I did get some bad news from the intellectual disability physician I saw yesterday. I also am due to get bloodwork done because my irritable bowel syndrome symptoms seem to have gotten worse. Fingers crossed this is nothing serious.

On Monday, I attended the monthly brain injury meet-up. It was good. I do struggle to fit in though, with me having acquired my brain injury shortly after birth and with my not having answers as to why things seem to be getting worse. I did get some answers on Friday though.

On Wednesday, I saw my GP’s nurse practitioner for the IBS symptoms. They seem to have eased a little since then, but as with everything functional medicine, they ebb and flow. I hope nothing else is going on. I mean, it’s been nearly 14 years since I got the IBS diagnosis. Back then, when I had a colonoscopy, my wife was worried about cancer, but I reassured her hardly any 26-year-old with no family history of cancer gets colon cancer. Now thankfully I’m still young for that at 39, but I do know all the warnings about going to your doctor if your IBS symptoms start or change when you’re over forty. Add to that the fact that the intellectual disability physician considers me part of the aging population and I’d rather be wrong in a good way than missing something that turns out to be dangerous.

On Thursday, I had a visit from the occupational therapist about my tremors. They’ve been getting worse, as has my mobility impairment. I also feel like I’m experiencing cognitive decline. The intellectual disability physician had referred me to the OT because she’s clueless what to do about the tremors and yet doesn’t think it’d help to send me to a neurologist. Two weeks ago, the OT had given me a weighted wristband to try, but it didn’t work at all. She’s not sure what will.

On Friday, like I said, I saw the institution intellectual disability physician. I came into her office rather upset because of the OT appt on Thursday and because I felt like the doctor was not taking me seriously about the tremors. I asked her up front to explain what they are and why it wouldn’t help to send me to a specialist. The explanation I got was roughly the same one she’s been giving me for years, but harsher: because of the brain bleed I sustained as an infant, I’m at risk of earlier decline compared to non-disabled adults. I know this is partly true from having attended meetings of other people with cerebral palsy, but 39 (or rather, early 30s, as I’ve been declining for years) is a bit young still.

However, she did admit that my psych meds, including for many years high doses of an antipsychotic, have left damage too. Unfortunately, it’s irreversible by now, so even though I’m at a much lower dosage of my meds than I was years ago, there’s no way to cure my tremors or stop the decline. The only glimmer is the fact that she reassured me I don’t have a neurodegenerative disease. That is, of course I do, it’s just not something that can be named (like Parkinson’s). In that sense, hardly a glimmer at all.

Since yesterday, I’ve been rather sad and angry. I was originally coerced into taking my meds because the psych hospital didn’t know how to handle my meltdowns and they were threatening seclusion. The dosage kept being upped for various rather unclear reasons. I mean, I was never psychotic and my depression wasn’t so severe that medication should’ve been the first course of action. But what did I know?

The worst is I’m still in the system. Not in the psych hospital, of course, but the institution is pretty much as oppressive, just in other ways. It all makes me feel rather upset.

I’m linking up with #WotW, with my phrase of the week being “medical appointments”.

Janie Mac I’m Nearly Forty…

Posted on by Astrid
Daily writing prompt
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
View all responses

Last Monday, I had a meeting with the intellectual disability physician who prescribes my psychiatric medication. The first thing we needed to discuss, was me tapering my antipsychotic. That’s going on, thankfully. However,I also had been complaining for months about increasing tremors in my right leg and hand, decreased mobility and more pain. Unfortunately, according to her, there’s nothing that can be done about these issues to make them go away. I mean, she’s referring me to occupational therapy, but it’s not like that’s going to lessen my symptoms. More like make them more manageable, I hope.

She says my symptoms are due to the brain bleed I suffered as an infant. She however added: “You’re getting older.” Ouch! I’m turning forty this year. That’s not old, or is it?

I’ve always thought that I wouldn’t live a very long life. I mean, my paternal grandma made it to 94 and, when I was a child, my parents thought I took after her. Now, not so much. My other grandparents all lived to be in their late seventies or early eighties. My father will be 77 next week and my mother will be 71 in April. Familially speaking, I’m not at risk of dying young, even though my maternal grandmother suffered from heart disease and diabetes for decades before her death.

However, I do have the brain bleed. Cerebral palsy in itself doesn’t limit one’s life expectancy. Autism, statistically speaking, does. And it’s probably due to my mental health that I won’t make it to old age. I’ve had more close calls in the last few years than I’d like to admit.

My wife and I recently had a discussion about who would go first. She doesn’t cling to life as much as I do, but I’m far more impulsive. I hope both of us will make it to old age and in relatively good health too.

The above song has been on my mind for a few months already. My wife and I have been together eighteen years, but oh well…

My Existence Is a Medical Miracle, Or Is It? #3TC

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I just stumbled across Today’s #3TC prompt. In response, carol anne shares about her premature birth. She was born three months prematurely in 1980 and considers herself to be a medical miracle.

I, often, believe the same. I mean, I was born just over three months prematurely, albeit six years later than carol anne. I weighed 850 grams or 1lb 14oz at birth. I spent three months in neonatal care.

When I was younger, I’d occasionally half-jokingly say that I’m a calculation mistake. The reason is the fact that I was born at sometime between 25 and 27 weeks gestation. The official paperwork says I was born at 26 weeks 4 days gestation, but this wasn’t always easy to determine back then. My mother claimed that, back in 1986, the line between actively keeping preemies alive and only treating them when they showed genuine strength, was at 26 weeks. I never cared to look up whether that’s true, but I do know that my doctor was adamant he was keeping me alive. In this sense, not a miracle.

In another respect though, I’m definitely a medical miracle, in that obviously I wouldn’t have survived without medical technology.

Yesterday, I read about the Dionne quintuplets, who were born in 1934 and the last one of whom had just passed away. Compared to them, I’m not a miracle at all. I’m glad about that, as they were on public display throughout their childhoods.

Like carol anne, I realize I didn’t just survive thanks to medical technology, despite the fact that’s what my doctor more or less said when my father questioned him whether I should be continuing to receive treatment after my brain bleed. I wouldn’t have survived had I not had the will in me to survive.

This is somewhat of an interesting realization in light of my suicide attempts over the years. In 2017, I survived two medication overdoses and, this past summer, I cut my wrist. Thankfully, I survived and, in the case of the incident this summer, without medical intervention. I realize this means I still somehow have a desire to stay alive.

Disability: Describing My Impairments #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I know for sure I did a post describing my limitations on my now defunct blog, but don’t think I ever did one on here. Besides, even if I did, I learn something new about myself, including my disabilities, all the time. For my letter D post in the #AtoZChallenge, I thought I’d describe my disabling conditions in lay terms. Oh wait, the lay terminology is going to be really tough.

First, I am blind. I have what is called light perception, which means that I am able to see whether it is dark or light around me, but not what direction the source of light is coming from (that ability would be called light projection). Functionally speaking, even though I can still tell day and night-time apart and this is what sets the totally blind apart from those with any vision in medical terminology here in the Netherlands, I consider myself totally blind.

Next, I (most likely) have mild cerebral palsy (CP). I say “most likely” because my parents didn’t tell me whether I had any diagnosable condition that would explain my mobility impairment and I stopped seeing a physiatrist (physical disability doctor) when I was around nine. In any case, I walk with a drop foot on my left side that gets worse when I get tired. Though I can, with difficulty, walk a distance of about 5km at a time when I’m very energized that day, I do fall more easily than non-disabled people. I didn’t realize this until, several years ago, I read on a CP-related blog about fall risk assessments containing a question about whether you’ve fallen for any reason in the past year. Well, the blogger said hardly a week goes by that they don’t fall. That isn’t exactly true for me, since I hold onto someone’s arm or hand when walking, but I do fall at least once a month.

CP (or whatever it is) also means my fine motor skills aren’t great. I used to get physical therapy for this. I did exercises like touching my thumbs to each of the other fingers. I can now do that easily with my right hand and with some difficulty with my left. I cannot use a knife and f ork to eat with and, even with my specially adapted spoon, often make a bit of a mess. I can type and do so with both hands, but I much prefer to use my right hand and, even though I was taught the ten-finger touch typing, I don’t do it fully correctly. As long as it works, though…

Since CP is caused by brain damage, in my case a brain bleed sustained shortly after birth, it can also come with other difficulties, such as processing issues and lower energy levels. This can also be part of autism, which I was diagnosed with at age 20, of course.

Autism, of course, has its core symptoms of differences in social communication and repetitive behaviors and interests. Because I can hold down a reasonably normal-sounding one-on-one conversation about myself, as clinical assessments often are, I am diagnosed as “mild” or level 1. I am not “mild” by any means, truthfully.

I am tired. I was writing an entire rant on why I am nnot “mildly” autistic, but I was using all kinds of technical terms and I promised you a lay explanation. I don’t think this post makes much sense, but oh well.

Brain Injury As It Relates to Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. We’ve arrived at my letter B post in the #AtoZChallenge. I struggled with what topic to choose for this letter, but eventually settled on brain injury. As you will find out, this type of disability has a kind of controversial relationship to intellectual and developmental disabilities. After all, many people view an intellectual or developmental disability as necessarily present from birth. The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), however, considers an intellectual disability as having originated before the age of 22. In the Netherlands, the age of onset cut-of for an intellectual disability care profile in the Long-Term Care Act is 18. As such, people who acquired a brain injury in childhood affecting their ability to learn, are diagnosable as having an intellectual disability.

With respect to other developmental disabilities, such as autism, the diagnostic waters get even muddier. I, for one, was diagnosed as autistic at age 20 despite having suffered a brain bleed as an infant. Then, ten years later, the diagnosis was removed again because apparently a brain injury no matter how early on precludes an autism diagnosis. However, I could not be diagnosed with acquired brain injury-related neuropsychological or behavioral difficulties either, because these would have required a clear before/after difference. Besides, I am blind too, so most neuropsychological testing isn’t possible on me. As a result of this, I ended up with just a regular personality disorder diagnosis. Now I’m not 100% sure I don’t have a personality disorder, but it’s certainly not all there is to me diagnostically.

In the Dutch care system, people with acquired/traumatic brain injury usually fall under physical disability service providers, unless they have really severe challenging behavior. In that case, they usually either end up in an intellectual disability facility or a psychiatric hospital. There are a few specialist mental health units for people with brain injury, but these are treatment-based, not living facilities. There are also nursing home units for people with brain injury, but these cater towards people over 65.

Because I’d Had a Stroke…

Posted on by Astrid

I couldn’t possibly be autistic, my psychologist said, because I’d had a stroke as an infant and that somehow precluded a diagnosis of autism. Never mind that autism is genetic and said stroke supposedly didn’t change my genetic makeup to make me neurotypical. I, however, had to be diagnosed with acquired brain injury-related behavior change instead, but then again I couldn’t either, because I was too young when I sustained the stroke for my behavior to be considered as having changed either; after all, a six-week-old infant hardly shows any behaviors that would be considered significant in an adult. For this reason, I ended up with just some regular personality disorders, specifically dependent and borderline PD. Never mind that these have their onset in early adulthood and I’d shown symptoms since childhood. As it later turned out, my psychologist’s reason for changing my diagnosis had nothing to do with logic and everything with her wish to kick me out of care.

This post was written for the Six Sentence Story link-up, for which the prompt word is “stroke”. It isn’t completely factual, in the sense that, though my psychologist kept referring to what happened to me at six weeks of age as a stroke, it was actually a brain bleed. That doesn’t change the rest of the story though.

I Am Not a Calculation Mistake

Posted on by Astrid

Like I mentioned last week, I have been doing a Bible study plan on YouVersion called Hope Heals in the Midst of Suffering. I finished it yesterday and it was awesome. It was written by Katherine, a woman who survived a severe stroke shortly after becoming a mother, as well as her husband.

The plan follows Joseph’s story, the part of Genesis I had gotten stuck on in my Bible in a Year plan. I was glad to read it now.

At one point, Katherine shares that, about a year after her stroke, she is still unable to perform many basic functions. She is still in adult diapers, unable to eat, unable to even lift up her head. Her family is having Thanksgiving dinner with her son, then a toddler. As the family are playing with her son, she wonders if there was a mistake. Should she have died from her stroke?

It was at this point that a lightbulb went off in my head. I, too, have often wondered whether my life is a mistake. A calculation mistake, to be exact.

You see, I was born over three months premature. Officially, I was born at 26 weeks 4 days gestation. However, it is quite probable given the circumstances of my conception that my mother really wasn’t yet 26 weeks along. At the time, 26 weeks gestation was the cutoff for active, life-saving treatment in the NICU.

My parents weren’t even sure I should be treated actively. At one point, when I’d suffered a brain bleed, my father asked the neonatologist what he was doing with regards to my treatment. “We’re just keeping her alive,” he said. He (or his nurse) added that my father shouldn’t interfere in my treatment or he’d lose custody of me.

In 2004, when I was eighteen, this same doctor was quoted in a newspaper as saying that he sometimes meets preemies he’s kept alive back in his early days as a doctor, about whom he wonders: “What have we done?!” I at the time tried to reassure myself that he wouldn’t have meant me. Or would he? I, after all, am multiply-disabled and in long-term care.

The devotional in the Bible plan I was reading continued. Katherine at this point heard God clearly speak: “I am God. I do not make mistakes.”

This was what I needed to hear! I have tried to find my neonatologist on Google several times since that newspaper article. However, I don’t need his opinion. I have talked to my father about his views on my quality of life several times, but it hasn’t helped. I don’t need my father’s opinion either. God chose for me to be kept alive and that’s what matters.

Grace and Truth

Also joining Friendship Friday this week.

Friday Evening Ramblings

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all,

A lot has happened over the past few days. Last Tuesday or Wednesday, we were checking out the website for our current care agency and we found out they have stories from clients, family and staff on the website. One of the stories was about a woman who lives with minimal brain dysfunction. This is the old term for invisible effects of brain injury. She had this from birth. I loved reading her story. It was so relatable. Then again, some of us were feeling off. Like, this woman lives in housing for people with brain injury and some wondered whether we can do this too.

Then we had an idea. We read about a training program called Hersenz. This translates roughly to “brain etc.” It is kind of like a continued course about the effects of brain injury and learning to handle those at home. For like when you can’t be in a rehabilitation center but can’t quite cope at home either. I don’t know whether it’s for people who live independently only, as we have no intention of leaving this facility.
I then inquired about whether there’s a brain injury cafe in my area, where people with brain injury come once a month to discuss their issues. There isn’t as far as we can tell, so oh well. Oh, you all know that we have some level of brain injury from a brain bleed we sustained shortly after birth right?
We also have been thinking of asking whether we can have our story on the agency website too. That would be fab!
Today we had a meeting with our psych nurse and nurse practitioner from the mental health team. I can’t quite remember all that we discussed but it was a good meeting.
Oh by the way, I’m Danique. I’m 21 like Clarissa and I guess I split off from her. Not really sure why. I don’t care though. There’s someone softly telling me that splitting isn’t possible in adulthood unless you experience recurring trauma, which we don’t right now. Well I don’t care. We also think we found a younger one who is 11 and is called Janita or Janique Or Janelle but she isn’t really sure about her name.
I feel pretty awesome right now! I guess there’s someone else feeling triggered or sad or whatever, as I sense those feelings too.

Danique

Premature Birth: Living with “Preemie Syndrome” #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day 16 in the #AtoZChallenge. I am feeling very uninspired and unmotivated once again. In fact, when my husband suggested I postpone today’s post to tomorrow and do it on procrastination, that felt tempting for a bit. Instead, I am doing it on the effects of premature birth.

I was born at 26 weeks gestation. This means I was over three months premature. I weighed only 850 grams. I had to be put into an incubator and had to be on the ventilator for six weeks.

I already shared in my B and C posts about the effects of my premature birth on my eyes and brain. Retinopathy of prematurity caused me to go legally blind. A brain bleed, called an intraventricular hemorrhage, caused me to develop hydrocephalus and possible cerebral palsy.

Because some preemies have a ton of hard-to-explain issues that fall under no one particular diagnosis, the members of the PREEMIE-CHILD mailing list coined the term “preemie syndrome”. This is of course not a real syndrome, but it is used to describe the fact that many children who were born prematurely fit into multiple boxes of disability to a certain extent, but may not meet the full criteria. For instance, some children’s motor impairments are too mild to be classified as cerebral palsy. Mine might be.

It is known that preemies are at an increased risk of developing neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism or ADHD. Then again, some clinicians don’t diagnose these conditions in preemies, as they reason this is somehow a different condition. I am not sure how I feel about this, as I don’t care about the exact syndrome but more about the symptoms. This was exactly what my psychologist told me to do, and then she changed my diagnosis for all kinds of weird reasons. But I digress.

I don’t mean “preemie syndrome” as yet another label to identify myself with. It’s not that simple. It’s just that we tend to fall through the cracks and I want to prevent that.

Cerebral Palsy: And Other Effects of my Brain Injury #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day three in the #AtoZChallenge. I am feeling a little off today, as my support worker canceled our appointment tomorrow and my husband will be home from work late this evening. For this reason, I’m feeling a little unmotivated to write. I hope that forcing myself to write today’s A to Z post anyway will help me snap out of the bad mood. Today, I am sharing about a disability that I have had since infancy, but that I didn’t know much about till a few years ago.

Like I mentioned on Monday, my autism diagnosis got taken away in 2016, because my then psychologist thought my having had a brain bleed as a baby precludes an autism diagnosis. It doesn’t, but it did help me gain some new perspective on my issues. Could I possibly be suffering from the effects of neonatal brain injury?

I asked my parents, starting with the obvious. I have left-sided weakness, affecting both my arm and leg, which I assumed was due to the brain bleed. I had heard of cerebral palsy and had figured out I might have this. I asked my father, but he didn’t answer my question. Possibly, he wasn’t told by the doctors, because my mobility impairment is relatively mild.

I did see a rehabilitation physician and had regular physical therapy until I was around eight. I also needed a cast on my left foot because my achilles tendon was at risk of becoming too short. Later, at age fifteen, I was diagnosed with scoliosis. This isn’t so uncommon that it alone warrants another diagnosis. However, coupled with all the other issues, I put two and two together.

Cerebral palsy, for those who don’t know, is basically a mobility impairment due to a brain injury acquired in utero, at birth or in the first year of life.

I finally went to my GP in 2017 to ask him, again focusing on my mobility impairment. This, after all, is the defining characteristic of cerebral palsy. I was just told I had acquired brain injury.

Still, in late 2018, I joined the national CP charity in my country. When I went to their conference in November, all puzzle pieces fell in place. Not only were my symptoms – not just the walking difficulties – characteristic of CP, but I met people with milder walking difficulties than mine who had been diagnosed as having CP.

There are five different levels of CP, depending on gross motor functioning (ability to walk or otherwise move around). People in level 1 and 2 can walk independently, though those in level 2 require some handheld mobility aids for long distances or on uneven ground. I would probably score as level 1 or maybe 2, but this motor functioning assessment is appropriate for children and adolescents only. There are also several different types of CP, depending on which limbs are affected and how. I probably have spastic hemiplegia, meaning CP affects one side of my body only.

Currently, I am not looking for an official CP diagnosis. I probably had one as a child, so digging up my old records may reveal it, but I’m not in a position to do so at this point. I also wonder what benefit I could gain from this. The support groups for CP on Facebook allow me in based on the facts of my brain injury and resulting mobility impairment. Besides, like my GP said in 2017, a physical or occupational therapist treating me for my brain injury would have to take into account the major disability of my blindness. Maybe, should I ever go into long-term care for the blind, I’ll be able to afford support for this.

A diagnosis of cerebral palsy requires mobility impairments, but a brain injury can have other effects. At the CP conference, the first presentation I attended was on overload. The same cognitive and affective difficulties that people who acquire a brain injury later in life can endure, can affect those with neonatal brain injury. In that sense, my psychologist may’ve been correct that my emotional and cognitive impairmetns are due to that.