#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 8, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this International Women’s Day! I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. It’s 7:30PM, so no more coffee for me. If you’d like a drink though, feel free to grab one and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. For most of the week, it’s been absolutely gorgeous! Today, we even reached 20°C. I know that this isn’t good news, in the sense that it’s way too warm for early March. I do care, but I also realize that I alone (or even all of the Netherlands alone) can’t stop or slow down climate change. For this reason, I’m enjoying the good weather while I can.

If we were having coffee, then I’d brag about all the physical activity I got in. Yesterday, I set a new record on my exercise minutes by exercising (mostly walking) for over three hours. I burned 600 active calories according to my Apple Watch.

Today, I didn’t walk as much, but still went for a few nice walks and I did ride the side-by-side bike. It’s an eBike and my staff had forgotten to check its battery level, so it quit working midway through our ride.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that, on Thursday, my staff and I took a walk around the nearby lake. We also walked this route one day in late January and I remembered a little café along the way had the most delicious caramel pie. My partner looked at the menu on Wednesday and said the caramel pie wasn’t on it. Maybe it was the “pie of the week”. Thankfully, once at the café, my staff asked the waitress whether they still had the caramel pie and they did!

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I am planning to create a trinket dish out of polymer clay soon. I ordered a cutter for it, which arrived on Monday. Unfortunately, my ceramic tile that I work on, is too small to cut out the shape on. However, one of my staff said she still had ceramic tiles somewhere and, thankfully, these were big enough. Haven’t gotten down to actually creating the trinket dish yet, because the weather’s just too beautiful.

If we were having coffee, I’d also share that, on Tuesday, a staff and I went for a walk around grounds again with the purpose of taking pictures of nature. There were mostly snowdrops and crocuses to be seen.



A few days later though, they’d mostly gone and the first daffodils could be spotted. No pics of those, as it was too sunny when I was out today.

If we were having coffee, I would conclude by saying this week overall was good. I had a few moments when I was in distress over the fact that there were quite a few temp workers, but the staff made sure always to assign me a regular staff. I realize it can’t always be this way and I’m okay with that, but I did tell my staff that my accepting a temp worker once out of necessity doesn’t make them a regular.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 1, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this first day of March. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. I’ve just had my last cup of coffee for the day, but if you’re quick, you may be able to enjoy a soft drink. We usually get chips with our soft drinks on weekends, but if I’m correct, the staff ordered meatballs. Let’s have a drink (and a snack) and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. Most days, it was chilly but not rainy. We got the most rain on Thursday, but even then I managed to go out.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I did achieve the perfect month on my Apple Watch in February. My March challenge is incredibly easy: get in at least 3.63km of walking/running on at least fourteen days this month. I always thought the challenges were based on the previous month’s achievements, but I’m pretty sure I got a lot more steps in during February.

If we were having coffee, I’d report that I’ve been struggling again. This led to a number of arguments between me and the staff. Particularly, it frustrates me to no end that some staff are much more likely to react angrily to my irritability than others. As a result, I don’t accept gestures indicating they support me from these staff. Like, if you’ve first been telling me off, I won’t accept it when you offer me comfort. Unfortunately, my assigned staff claims this differing treatment is just how it is and she says it’s because I don’t accept the same treatment from everyone. This came across as if she was holding me responsible for the different approaches.

If we were having coffee, I’d also share that I’ve been frustrated with my day schedule and particularly the lack of clarity in it. I particularly don’t like the fact that, each time, I’ll have to choose an activity out of fifteen or so options. Thankfully, I was able to turn my frustration around today and decide that, on Monday, I’m going to the next town to buy groceries and, on Tuesday, I’m going to cook dinner for the home.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that part of my struggle is the extreme discrepancy between my intelligence and my emotional functioning. I’m said to function emotionally at a level comparable to a child under 18 months of age in most respects, but my IQ is above-average. Moreover, I happen to have an interest in psychology and social work. As a result, I, for example, know more about the theory of care and support than most of my staff, but I can’t apply it to my own situation and not just because I’m the client.

Like, when I’m in a good place mentally, I sometimes find myself pointing out ways staff are asking too much of me emotionally, but precisely because I can say so, I’m judged not to need the support I need.

If we were having coffee, I would however also share that I still experience moments of joy. For example, on Monday, a new student staff was being introduced to my activities and we created a unicorn (of course) out of polymer clay. This time, because the unicorn was rather fat and the staff had placed the front legs far apart, I chose to add a heart to its belly. I also decorated its back with rhinestones. Two pictures below, because my staff couldn’t capture both the heart and the rhinestones in one.


If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you that I struggle with self-criticism and this also leads me towards less creativity. I, however, overcame the feeling that I “should be better” sometime on Tuesday when I created a rather simple bracelet. It was just beads stringed onto elastic wire. However, looking at my comment about emotional development, I sincerely believe I did a pretty awesome job, since a toddler can’t do this at all.

Sorry for the rambly post. I’m still feeling hazy after another meltdown. By the way, no meatballs for our evening treat, as somehow they’d disappeared.

February 2025 In My Kitchen

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! A while ago, I discovered Sherry’s In My Kitchen linky. As most of you know, I don’t have a kitchen, but of course my care home does. I’m using this opportunity to share some thoughts about the foods I’ve prepared and/or consumed lately. Do polymer clay-related musings count too, since polymer clay is cured in an oven? Just kidding (a bit).

Last week, like I think I shared, I visited the next town’s market and bought olives, fried chicken and peppers. I also bought arugula at the supermarket. My staff whipped up the most delicious salad out of these and some carrots that were in our fridge. I had some the next day as well. Sadly, I was under the impression that the staff had used up all peppers, only to be told yesterday that there were still peppers in the fridge. Those had by then gone bad.

I also bought blueberries and have been adding those to my muesli and quark that I eat for breakfast almost each day.

I’ve also been making smoothies lately. For example, a few weeks ago, we had lots of bananas that were on the ripe side, so we chose to whip up a smoothie with them. My current blender has only a 1 liter container, so at first I used to make only about four cups of smoothie and share them with my fellow residents who also stay up later.

Yesterday, a staff offered to help me prepare a smoothie for the entire home that we could use in place of our evening soft drink. Looking back, creating more smoothie than my container can hold is as simple as pouring the smoothie into cups then reloading the blender. The staff peeled and cored the apples and pears, something I think I could’ve helped with too, but oh well. I chose to add cinnamon, cardamom and clove, as well as soy milk as a liquid. The smoothie was absolutely delicious!

For the upcoming month, I’m really hoping to do more in the care home kitchen. Honestly, I feel I could easily be whipping up my own salads and do more in the smoothie-making process. I’ve also been looking at treats and even main meals to cook. I mean, I have the two-hour supported activity time slot in the afternoon and this often is currently spent on nothing more than a walk. I have been nagging my staff for a more structured activity schedule for months, but this seems to be rather difficult. One can always hope though.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (February 22, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare once again. It’s almost 10:30PM here, so no coffee for me. Since this is a virtual get-together, you’re free to grab your own beverage of choice. Let’s have a drink and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been all over the place with freezing night-time temps and daytime highs hardly above freezing early in the week, then a daytime high of 16°C yesterday. Today the daytime high was 12°C, which is still quite warm for late February. Unfortunately, it was raining most of the day today.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that this week was a mixed bag mental health-wise. I’ve mostly been quite tired, but the bloodwork I had done on Monday came back all clear. I wish there was something simple that could explain my daytime tiredness, but I’m pretty sure that if I pressure the doctor to do more testing, they’ll just say I shouldn’t give in to fatigue, as I was told the last few times (many years ago) that I complained of being too tired.

Yesterday was a good day, but today I felt a bit irritable and overloaded.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I spent a lot of time early in the week switching web browsers. Somehow, with the latest update, Edge for iOS is pretty much impossible to use for me. Whether this is an actual bug in its accessibility with VoiceOver or it’s just that things have been switched around like crazy and I’m not tech savvy enough for it anymore, I don’t know. I tried getting the freakin’ Copilot (Microsoft’s AI) that was constantly in my way to disappear, but it wouldn’t.

So I decided to leave Edge behind altogether and switch browsers, because I don’t like using one browser on my iPhone and another on PC. I finally settled on Chrome and, though I’m still figuring things out, mostly it works okay.

If we were having coffee, I’d then tell you that a (now former) staff came to say goodbye on Monday. I gave her the “bull in a china shop”, ie. the polymer clay elephant in a mug I’d created last week. She loves unicorns and elephants, but she already had a unicorn.

This time around, I didn’t get a proper description from the Be My Eyes app, because it judged the mug to be its body and the letter J (for the staff’s first name) to be its tail.

If we were having coffee, I’d then tell you all I had a good day yesterday. I walked a lot, but also visited the next town’s market. I had originally been uncertain as to whether I wanted fried fish (or shrimp really) because of it being quite a high-calorie, high-fat food. I eventually said “screw it!” and considered yesterday a total cheat day. I, after all, also had fried chicken for dinner. Granted, other than that I only had a salad.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share I do really need to lose weight though. I’m about 2kg overweight, which doesn’t seem like a lot given that I used to be 20kg heavier than I am now. However, the “screw it!” thoughts are pretty commonplace especially given the current state of the world. For example, my unhealthy voice is telling me it’s not a problem if I risk getting a heart attack ten years from now because, for all we know, the world may’ve gone up in smoke by then anyway. I, thankfully, do still have more tangible reasons to lose weight or at least not gain any. Like, I still want to be able to wear my favorite pants.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I am still going strong meeting my movement goal on my Apple Watch each day this month. I’m really hoping for the perfect month award. That being said, I’m not overcompensating for my having indulged in too many “cheat” foods. Not that I believe in cheat foods anyway, since there are no bad foods, just less healthy habits. And overexercising can be a less healthy habit too, as my dietitian reminded me on Wednesday. Not that I’ve ever truly done that, honestly. The bottom line though is that I’m not engaging in compulsive eating habits or exercise. I feel things might need to be a little more controlled, but I’m not sure how to do this.

Spoon Theory

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I’m back after more than a week of not touching the blog. I feel horrible for having neglected something I really love over the past few years, ie. my blog. However, I just don’t seem to have the spoons for it.

Spoons? This week’s prompt for #SoCS is “spoonful”. I immediately thought of spoon theory.

Spoon theory is a way of describing life with a chronic illness or disability that limits someone’s energy levels when compared to non-disabled people’s energy levels. I haven’t delved deep into it, but the way I understand it, each person has a set number of “spoons” or spoonfuls of energy. However, for a disabled or chronically ill person, daily activities take up more spoons than they would for someone who is currently healthy and non-disabled.

I was thinking of this when, after a dispute with one of my staff over temp workers, I wanted a way to explain how hard it is for me to deal with a temp worker, especially when they haven’t been told what to do with/for me, because “she can explain everything really well”.

For example, let’s say we each have ten spoonfuls of energy a day. The actual number doesn’t matter, but the point is it’s the same for someone who isn’t disabled, like the staff, as it is for me. For a non-disabled staff, their first spoonful of energy of the day might go to showering. For me, it goes to processing the staff’s greeting in the morning and figuring out who is going to help me with my morning routine. Then, if it’s a temp worker, the next spoon goes to introducing myself and figuring out whether I “know” them already (as some of them claim I should “know” them when they’ve been my staff just once many months ago). Then, another spoon goes to thinking of whether it’s a day I’m supposed to take a shower (which I hate, so doing it everyday to skip this step isn’t really an option) or just do a quick wash. Showering costs me at least two additional spoons, often more. Then it’s not even half an hour into my morning routine and I’ve already spent half my spoons for the day. I accept this reality, but additional spoons go into explaining my routine to temp workers even though a lot of it is in my day schedule. When a temp worker (or even a regular staff who rarely works mornings) helps me with my morning routine, this usually means I’m overloaded by the time I’ve finished breakfast.

And just so you know, getting up on my own and doing my entire morning routine independently, would mean I’d spent all of my spoons by the time I had gotten dressed or even earlier. I tried this when at the intensive support home, where the reasoning was that if you can do something physically, it doesn’t matter how much energy it costs. I was then told I was being “negative” for going into bed right after my shower.

For your information, spoon shortage does not just result in physical exhaustion. For me, it often results in mental overload, which I may show as a meltdown. Then people reason that melting down costs energy too so why am I “choosing” to spend my spoons on that? The thing is, meltdowns aren’t a choice.

I honestly feel that staff in general, not just the staff who refuses to support me after said dispute, need to be more aware of spoon theory. Then they’d understand better why I can walk for 45 minutes but not do my personal care completely independently. Hint: walking is just one action for me (putting one foot in front of the other). Oh, that’s two because I have two feet. However, my point is that walking isn’t nearly as complex a task as personal care is.

That being said, I feel that spoon theory would not just help me, but the other clients too. There’s a client here who “takes advantage” of the others by not doing any chores, according to the same staff who tells me I can explain everything perfectly fine so the temp worker doesn’t need introducing. She’s all for fairness and equality and everyone being the same. Newsflash: we aren’t. And who knows how much energy goes into this client’s everyday activities?

Okay, this post goes into the “Awareness” category because it’s not really a ramble. Well, it is, but it is also a post to raise awareness. I haven’t added the “#SoCS” ending to my post title because, well, not sure why but it didn’t feel appropriate. I hope that’s okay.

Abandonment Wounds: What Will Happen If I Can No Longer Mask?

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling with attachment issues a lot lately. Not related to a specific person this time. I mean, yes, like I said on Wednesday, four of my “favorites” among the staff are either on leave or will be leaving (be it temporarily or permanetly) soon. That’s not the problem, since I’ve learned the hard way to expand my list of “favorites” when necessary. It’s in my best interest too to avoid a situation like the one with my assigned staff in Raalte, who was leaving and left me with just two other trusted staff.

The issue I’ve been dealing with lately, is much more existential: the knowledge that, if I’m truly myself, I’m unacceptable. Not because I’m some kind of criminal. I’m not. Rather, I’m an outcast. And while I won’t be in the prison system for that, being shoved around care home after care home while not having family to advocate for me, will be equally horrid.

I have been struggling with memories of the circumstances surrounding that assigned staff leaving. A few months before she left, I sent her a rather dramatic E-mail about how no-one will be in my life forever. Well, my spouse says we’ll always be in each other’s life, but truthfully we can’t know that. Besides, when we lived together, there were just a little too many situations in which my spouse (understandably) was disappointed in me that are however things I couldn’t help. For clarity’s sake: I don’t blame my spouse, but maybe with my being multiply-disabled, I’m not suited for “traditional” long-term relationships. Ha, now I’m reminded that my spouse often reminds me that I said when we were choosing to be a couple, that I didn’t want a traditional relationship.

Of course, the reason I’m undesirable by society’s standards isn’t my fault. Like, I can’t help being disabled. But just because it isn’t something I choose, doesn’t make it any less real or hurtful. In fact, it hurts more because I can’t choose not to be me.

I mean, I’ve masked more or less successfully for many years. Mostly less successfully, but my parents prevented me from landing in the care system at a much earlier age than I did by claiming the police and other people who thought I was disturbed, were just stupid. They were masters at manipulating the system. I am not.

Back to my assigned staff in Raalte. She was the first to take my wish to leave seriously. I assume she genuinely felt that the intensive support home could better serve me than the care facility, but I also assume she had a team and a manager to deal with and it remains a fact that some of her coworkers couldn’t cope with my behavior. Which was, for the record, much less challenging than it is now.

It genuinely scares me to think of what will happen if (when?) I can no longer mask at all. There was this news feature sometime in 1997 or 1998 about a girl, aged about sixteen, who was too intelligent for intellectual disability services but who still couldn’t cope in adolescent mental health services and was, as a result, restrained long-term. After her family sought media attention, she was transferred to a treatment center for youth with mild intellectual disability and severe challenging behavior. I don’t know what became of her.

Last week, when I had several severe outbursts related to my most recent frustration, I begged my support coordinator to ask the behavior specialist to involve the Center for Consultation and Expertise (CCE) again. I really want to get the ball rolling on getting them involved before it’s too late and I’m being kicked out again, like the last time they were involved in 2018. In this sense, a consultation might help more this time, because at this point, as far as I know, staff aren’t yet so much at their wit’s end that they see the situation as unresolvable. But I’m scared of what will happen if they do get to this point, like apparently some staff in Raalte were.

A Recent Frustration Related to My Care

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I haven’t blogged in over a week because I’ve been struggling once again. Honestly, I can see why judging from my experience over the past 2 1/2 years, people would say I’m always struggling anyway. The thing is, there are and there definitely were times I am or was struggling less. Besides, to say that this is just the way I am, is blaming me for the system not meeting my needs. And we all know that the system is broken and this is a reality, but I’m honestly getting frustrated with how little recognition I get for my attempts at coping with this reality and how much blame I get when I fail at doing so.

Now on to why I’m struggling again. I mentioned about a month ago that I would no longer be assigned unfamiliar temp workers. This is a definite positive. However, with this home having twenty residents, many of whom with high support needs, the pool of so-called familiar staff consists of at least thirty people. That isn’t the problem: I am fine with all thirty coming into my room to do activities with me, just like I’ve always been fine with the occasional unfamiliar temp worker. The problem is that all thirty so-called familiar staff are supposed to be assigned to me equally often and I’m not allowed to have a preference. The reason is the idea that I’ll add more people to my trusted circle if they’re required to be assigned to me more often.

I can see their point, in particular because four out of eight staff who I consider part of my trusted circle now, are either on sick leave or leaving soon, be it temporarily (on maternity leave) or permanently. I can see why one would like to avoid a situation like with my assigned staff in Raalte, who left about two months before I did and who at the time was one out of only three staff I fully trusted. Then again, I’m never going to have a circle of thirty, just like most people don’t have thirty close friends. And that’s what this whole “get to know everybody” thing feels like. I do try to expand my circle as needed, but I just can’t treat all staff the exact same unless they treat me the exact same and, in that case, we’d all be losing sight of each other’s individuality.

Besides, the staff don’t follow their own rules when it suits them. For example, it’s a rule that I’ll see one staff for my morning activity and lunchtime, but they’ve been switching that around when they felt like it, yet telling me (and each other) of the rule that they must switch at other times. In other words, the staff require me to deal with a minimum of six switches of staff per day, but when it suits them, this can be increased and yet it can’t be decreased. That’s while I made it clear in the document detailing my care needs last summer that I don’t do well with staff switches. Yet they blame me for the agreements we made back then not working, even though they didn’t follow through on most of them. Most notably, they’d told me they’d try to have a trusted staff assigned to me most days for at least part of the day and that just wasn’t happening. In fact, eight out of ten times at least, the staff assigned to do nearly four hours of support with me, was a random, unfamiliar temp worker. I don’t blame myself for this not working out.

I’m sharing this post with the Writer’s Workshop for this week. It was a recent frustration, in that this rule (about required switching) hadn’t been adhered to as strictly as it’s now until last week. I’ve also had a lot of discussions about it with my support coordinator this past week. I’m having a care plan review next week and am planning to raise this issue both specifically and as an example of a general trend towards blaming me for a broken system and mistrust towards me. After all, staff are claiming I would only want my “favorites” assigned to me if they didn’t require staff switches as often as they do now. Let me just say this wasn’t even the case in Raalte, where I did have a core team of at least somewhat trusted staff.

Growing Up Emotionally

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is “when I grow up”. I’m going to be forty next year, so by most standards, I’m considered to have “grown up”. Only by the model that includes life experiences such as working, buying a house, etc., I’m not necessarily truly an adult. After all, though my spouse and I own a house together, buying it was mostly done out of necessity so that I could go into long-term care. I’ve never worked, not even had a side job as a teen.

That being said, in many respects I’m still young at heart. I know everyone my age says so to be cool, but I don’t mean it in a positive way. Rather, I mean it to say that emotionally I’m very vulnerable. Like I shared when discussing emotional development as it relates to intellectual disability (and autism) in 2023, on many subscales of the emotional development assessment used here in the Netherlands, I’m considered an infant or toddler. That doesn’t mean I can’t grow.

When I grow emotionally, I’d like to become more regulated. My psychiatrist used to say that I’d likely experience less emotional dysregulation after age thirty. I’m not sure that’s true in my case. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not true. The frequency and severity of my meltdowns has increased, though the duration has lessened significantly. I no longer experience outbursts that last all day. That, I mostly attribute to my staff’s proactive attitude.

I’d also like to be more independent. The problem with this, however, is the fact that my energy level varies significantly from day to day. Because of this, I hardly ever progress in my independence even though I might be able to. The reason is the fact that, if I do something independently once, my staff and others are going to expect me to always be able to do it.

Same for adaptability and emotional regulation: my abilities vary from day to day and sometimes hour to hour. I, for this reason, struggle to really make progress. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to.

Echolalia

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! I’m officially joining the #JusJoJan fun today, because the prompt inspired me. It’s “echo”.

There’s a resident at my home who repeats everything she hears. I was actually confused when I first got introduced here, because this resident has a very clear, high-pitched sing-song voice reminiscent of staff. When I asked why the staff were saying everything twice, one of them explained that this person wasn’t a staff but a client and she experiences echolalia.

I immediately assumed she’s autistic, but she isn’t. She has Sanfilippo Syndrome, a rare (albeit relatively common in the Netherlands) metabolic disease that leads to cognitive decline. Apparently, this person’s cognitive decline is so advanced that she doesn’t recognize anyone, except for sometimes her parents.

It’s interesting to note that, when I first got here, she always only echoed the staff, not the other residents. Now she regularly echoes me and sometimes other clients too. She still doesn’t repeat it when someone tells her off for talking too much. I think that’s funny.

I, being autistic, sometimes experience echolalia too. When under a lot of stress, I engage in immediate echolalia, like this other client: I repeat what has just been said. Sometimes, I also experience delayed echolalia. When this happens, I notably echo my fellow clients.

When I’m in a mentally good place, I sometimes feel guilty for it, because it feels like I’m appropriating them. That’s not my intention though and, well, I’m not echoing on purpose anyway.

2024: The Year in Review

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s the last day of the year and this means doing a review of the past year. I realize I wrote about my 2024 on Saturday already, but I’d like to do a proper review today.

The year started out pretty tough, because I had some issues with my assigned staff, now this side of the home’s support coordinator. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say he isn’t the most socially adept and his attempts at gaining my trust went horribly wrong. This is the reason he isn’t the one making decisions for me or having meetings with me about my care.

I have had some issues with getting proper care over the past year in general, like when the behavior specialist decided to do the minute-by-minute compensatory system when I was in distress during my time without one-on-one. The reason was the idea that I would need more and more care if they didn’t do this. That is, that’s what my then support coordinator said, but I figured out that the actual reason was the idea that I’d purposefully work myself up in order to get more care. This is simply not true: I pretty regularly tell my staff that they can leave early if I’m doing well, but I just can’t plan my distress to suit my one-on-one hours.

Over the summer, I had some issues with the fact that there were especially many unfamiliar temp workers assigned to my one-on-one care. I mean, I realize that there are more temp workers over the summer when the regular staff are on vacation, but the fact that most of them were assigned to me, frustrated me.

There have been other frustrating aspects to my care, but I’m so glad my support coordinator and two new assigned staff are trying to build a trust-based relationship with me rather than telling me I’m just a negative nagger.

In other departments, the year was a mixed bag too. I definitely didn’t do as well as I’d hoped with my movement, crafting or blogging. In fact, I honestly did worse than I did last year. I did, however, try cooking and baking more often.

Another positive is the fact that I am fully off my PRN tranquilizer and my topiramate and am now on a significantly lower dosage of aripiprazole (my antipsychotic) than I was last year. I also started therapy. First, I tried play therapy, but that wasn’t a success from the get-go. I now am in the early stages of movement therapy based on the Sherborne method.

In general, when I look back at 2024 and compare it to 2023, I can see how in some ways I did worse this year. This feels a bit disappointing and I’m not sure why it is. It may be because of my having significantly tapered my medication. I hope that whether this is the case or not, it won’t get worse in 2025.

That being said, I do feel that I’m starting to develop a tiny bit of trust in my staff and that wasn’t the case in 2023 at all. Here’s hoping I can continue on this journey next year.

This year was a true year of ups and downs in other areas, such as my marriage, too. Thankfully, I’m feeling optimistic that my spouse and I will make it through stronger. We’re both confident that we’ll always be soulmates!

In the health department, I did okay. I gained a little weight, but not so much that it’s worrisome to my dietitian. I remember telling her recently that I hadn’t gained weight last year over the holiday season, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t correct. As such, I hope that, if I’ve gained weight over this holiday season, I can lose it again.

One last positive: I finally got suitable orthopedic shoes, yay! They still get damage often due to my drop foot, but thankfully not to the point that they can’t be fixed.