Autistic In Education

Gentle information sharing that if you make under $19k a year you probably qualify for food stamps and state Medicaid. This varies state to state, but absolutely worth a Google.

It was extremely easy to apply and I now have full medical, some dental, psych, and $280 a month of food completely free.

No co-pays. And because Oregon is... slightly less bad than many states, many types of therapy are covered, a chiropractor, gender affirming surgery, it goes on. Abortion. I just got in with my free PCP who also offers telehealth.

Please look into benefits. It varies state by state, my experiences in the Midwest and South weren't as easy and all-encompassing. But SNAP and Medicaid made things possible for my dad and I in Indiana too, and I'm deeply grateful he taught me not to listen to internalized shame about it.

I've made a post about grocery shopping while poor that's still going around and helping people, let's add to this one too! Do you have information about government benefits? I just want to get people seeing and talking about this because it could change a life.

My big advice is to always go to your local extension office. Even if you don't qualify for food stamps or medicaid they will know of other local programs you might be able to use! Stuff like farmers market cash for senior citizens, childcare programs, low cost medical care, etc. They are there to make sure those resources get used!

!! Thank you! That last point is excellent. I've felt awkward reaching out for help but these systems are in place to help YOU, not some imaginary person who has it even worse than you

Also, program usage can help programs exist. If everyone goes, well, some folks have it worse and don't use it, then some programs might not have enough utilization to keep running. There have been food distributions in my hometown at times that literally said we aren't checking income just please come take it if you need or even just want it. Libraries rely on patrons. Like if you think you might need or want something apply for it, if only to keep it open for the other folks you think need it

Also if you don't know where / what programs exist in your area that could help you (because they can be hard to find), your local librarian should either know right away or be able to help you find stuff! Seriously libraries are so good at this, including often if you need help applying for food stamps or other programs.

For my fellow New Yorkers:

Medicaid/Essential Plan/CHIP/Marketplace:

Everything else (HEAP, SNAP, assistance programs, tax credits):

myBenefits will also indicate if you qualify for Medicaid/CHIP/Essential Plan, but NY State of Health is better for that as it can take you right into applying. Your local Department of Social Services can also help you apply to programs, but New York knows New Yorkers have a lack of desire to talk to people.

Now remember, because of New York’s high cost of living, more people qualify for programs funded entirely or partly by the state (including Medicaid) than just people at/below the Federal poverty line. A lot of the programs for improving energy efficiency and tax credits have a much higher income cutoff.

Oh and New York requires Medicaid to cover gender affirming care and abortions. The one major area that needs to improve is dental. New York dentists and New York Medicaid don’t agree on best practices. New York Medicaid is on a preventative healthcare trip lately. They’d rather you prevent/manage conditions.

In the United States it's common for high schools to stage a simulated lethal crash to teach kids about the dangers of distracted or impaired driving. This often includes fake blood and first responders to stage rescuing people from the crash. Is this done anywhere outside the United States? I don't feel like it is. So I ask

My high school certainly did this. Shock factor was a favorite tool of theirs.

International Tumblr people should look up how messed up the DARE program is. Having actual cops teach 10 year olds about drugs couldn’t possibly go wrong 😒

everyone's like wehhhhh why doesn't doctor house gets suuuueeed! like my man. literally every patient he sees is someone that's been trying to find a diagnosis for ages. i could live with a little medical malpractice if it were coming from someone ready to break into my home to look for allergens and not simply half heartedly listen to me before suggesting I lose weight and take ages of back and forth arguing to order a single test

"it's medical malpractice" have u ever been a doctor? most medicine is malpractice. let the man limp around chewing vicodin doing 50 invasive tests please

Once Taub (derogatory) derisively said about a patient with unexplained chronic pain “7 doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him, what does that mean?” and House replied without even thinking “it means they’re idiots” and proceed to work his ass off to diagnose the patient Taub wanted to write off as a faker or something. If a doctor had said that when that patient was ME, I wouldn’t dream of suing them in a million years

House is the type who would actually suspect MCAS when the bloodwork and allergy testing comes back normal.

Granted he’s also the type that would likely risk anaphylaxis in a patient in order to get the bloodwork to show a 20% increase in tryptase without telling the patient.

You can tell shit's getting real with tree pollen season starting up. I'm over here ordering some supplemental antihistamines from Denmark.

Right now, it's apparently mainly alder and hazel shooting their load locally. Wasn't previously aware that I was particularly allergic to either one of those, but okay. If it's pollen, there's an excellent chance my immune system is going to pitch fits at it. 😒 And of course it's just starting up. At least there don't seem to be a lot of maple trees around here, is all I can say.

The only antihistamines available OTC here next door in Sweden are the non-drowsy one a day types. (Which I have been taking again, but yeah that doesn't cut it alone sometimes.) A bit overly cautious here with what's available OTC in general, and I thought the UK could be annoying enough that way.

Whenever I finally manage to pop just across the bridge to Copenhagen, I may have to see what other OTC riches I might be able to find there. 🙄 If I weren't having some mobility problems, I probably would have made an in-person antihistamine (and cheaper decent cooking sake/real mirin/Shaoxing wine!*) run already. Because that's the type of exciting person I am.

Anyway, at least the acrivastine is easy enough to buy from surrounding countries, and it works pretty well for me. The stash I dragged with me from the UK is almost gone, so it seemed like an excellent time to re-up. Not quite desperate enough to resort to grey-market bottles of generic Benadryl from the US off eBay again quite yet.

______

* Because Systembolaget, not any urge to wash the Benadryl down with rice cooking wines.

8mg? Really Europe. They do realize that nothing is really going to actually stop anyone from taking more right.

Our pediatric formulation in the US and Canada has a higher dosage than that. We have 12.5mg, 25mg and 50mg for those of us who have overactive mast cells.

I would need 6 pills to treat a MCAS flair.

That's actually a usual adult dose of acrivastine, as low as it sounds. On the plus side, it lasts 8 hours and does usually work fairly well on me.

Unfortunately you can't get diphenhydramine (like standard US Benadryl) as an OTC antihistamine in most or all of Europe, AFAICT. It might make someone too drowsy. 🙄

I think that is available by prescription here, but I hesitate to even ask about it after one GP in the UK acted like I wanted crack or something. No idea what that was about, but I'd rather not encounter it again. Thus the eBay allergy med imports before, when family wasn't including some in care packages.

Diphenhydramine stimulates me like all 1st gen antihistamines do since ADHD loves to cause paradoxical side effects. It feels like what imagine most people would experience on Adderall when I am on it round the clock during a MCAS flair trying to prevent anaphylaxis from occurring.

There was an issue for a while with teens using it to get high (thanks TikTok 🙄). But most people usually only take 25mg (they could take the pediatric dose at 12.5mg if they are sensitive to side effects). I have driven to the store with what was technically grade 2 anaphylaxis to get some Benadryl to stop the histamine release causing the reaction (do not try at home, I make bad life choices and MCAS induced anaphylaxis can work differently than typical IgE mediated anaphylaxis. I have often a slower onset due to all the antihistamines/mast cell stabilizers I’m on and I have POTS so I have been told by my doctors to wait until heart rate or breathing is affected or more harm than good can come from epinephrine).

I don’t think with the rising acknowledgement of MCAS being a thing and J&J making a ton of money off Benadryl that it will ever return to prescription in the US.

You can tell shit's getting real with tree pollen season starting up. I'm over here ordering some supplemental antihistamines from Denmark.

Right now, it's apparently mainly alder and hazel shooting their load locally. Wasn't previously aware that I was particularly allergic to either one of those, but okay. If it's pollen, there's an excellent chance my immune system is going to pitch fits at it. 😒 And of course it's just starting up. At least there don't seem to be a lot of maple trees around here, is all I can say.

The only antihistamines available OTC here next door in Sweden are the non-drowsy one a day types. (Which I have been taking again, but yeah that doesn't cut it alone sometimes.) A bit overly cautious here with what's available OTC in general, and I thought the UK could be annoying enough that way.

Whenever I finally manage to pop just across the bridge to Copenhagen, I may have to see what other OTC riches I might be able to find there. 🙄 If I weren't having some mobility problems, I probably would have made an in-person antihistamine (and cheaper decent cooking sake/real mirin/Shaoxing wine!*) run already. Because that's the type of exciting person I am.

Anyway, at least the acrivastine is easy enough to buy from surrounding countries, and it works pretty well for me. The stash I dragged with me from the UK is almost gone, so it seemed like an excellent time to re-up. Not quite desperate enough to resort to grey-market bottles of generic Benadryl from the US off eBay again quite yet.

______

* Because Systembolaget, not any urge to wash the Benadryl down with rice cooking wines.

8mg? Really Europe. They do realize that nothing is really going to actually stop anyone from taking more right.

Our pediatric formulation in the US and Canada has a higher dosage than that. We have 12.5mg, 25mg and 50mg for those of us who have overactive mast cells.

I would need 6 pills to treat a MCAS flair.

What no one around me seemed to understand throughout my diagnosis process was why I NEEDED the psychiatrist to tell me that I was autistic. It wasn't that I had self-diagnosed, it wasn't that I wanted to be "quirky" or be part of the community--- it was because deep down in my heart, I knew that there was always something different about me, and if it turned out that I wasn't autistic then that meant that I still had to keep looking for answers. It's like there's always been a question on the tip of my tongue since birth and I've never known exactly what it was or how to answer it until my autism diagnosis. Not only that, but I felt like if it turned out that I WASNT autistic, that would mean that there was something wrong with me. If I wasn't autistic, then I was just a broken, messed up allistic.

The relief I felt when I got my autism diagnosis was tangible. My depression that I'd struggled with for years lifted. I felt happy and true to myself and accepted by my friends. I felt like, for once in my life, I had the answer that I had always been looking for. I wasn't a broken allistic person-- I was a perfectly good autistic person. My diagnosis was the best thing that ever happened to me.

This was very much my experience with diagnosis! It was such a relief! It doesn’t make sense to me why people don’t understand that

I remember them weighing and measuring our heights to calculate BMI and if you were "overweight" or "risk for being overweight" they'd send letters home to tell your parents. I got one once and was so overcome by shame and anger I immediately ripped it up. I was nine at the time.

A part of our gym credit in high school was to take a wellness course and the FIRST lesson they did was on bmi and we calculated ours to know our bmi number and how many pounds we need to lose or gain to get in the "right" range. I was fourteen then.

So, yeah, obsessed is a word for it. It's ingrained in our culture through school curriculum from childhood.

And I thought it was bad when someone simply mentioned (after accessing my child's medical records, because who else would weigh and measure a child) that my child had an "obese" BMI while being visibly small. Like, to everyone involved simply that, that my child was NOT present for, was deemed a huge step too far and wildly dangerous. Even by people who still think being fat is bad.

And you poor sods are dealing with all that? Like I believe u 100% but its hard to comprehend just how bad it is.

BMI was never meant to be used this way.

I remember those bullshit letters in high school. Didn’t help at all with my disordered eating. And scales being everywhere is very common in the US.

My best weight for my physical health is 180-190lbs. I have POTS though and remember that POTS doesn’t do well with being super thin and not muscular, which is why weight loss is not a treatment for POTS. I’ve been 160 and I was super symptomatic.

I physically cannot be in normal range according to BMI. But at 180lbs I look absolutely fit because I have to have a lot of lean muscle to even get down to that weight. I fit into kids L/XL at 180 pounds. I am deceivingly compact and typically horses under 16h I can’t fit on because they would need to weigh at least 1000lbs and be in good health for me to fit into the 20% rule with tack. I’m perfectly fine with that because I prefer tall horses anyway.

But according to BMI, I’m overweight and need to lose 30 pounds, which is not physically possible for me.

Bro wake up 116 new genders just dropped

My gender

ah, yes

summer means summer jobs, and that means a lot of students newly working in the food industry. be it starbucks, mcdonalds, or a local restaurant: do NOT mess with people’s food. giving someone milk when they ask for soy could kill them. giving someone meat when they ask for vegetarian could kill them. giving someone caffeine when they ask for none could kill them. people have deathly allergies and painful reactions and I have absolutely 0 sympathy for anyone who purposely messes with people’s food orders. respect people’s orders regardless of what you think would be a funny “prank” and regardless of how specific someone’s food order is. even if you had a 4 day straight shift if someone orders something specific you either do it or tell them that you cannot.

sick and disabled people should not have to be afraid of being sent to the hospital every time they go out to eat but some of you folks in the food industry really go out of your way to make us feel unsafe.

PS: if someone asks for a straw you fucking give it to them. chances are, most disabled people do not “look” how you think disability is supposed to look and if you refuse someone a straw because you doubt their need for it you are an asshole. disabled people are now being harmed and humiliated by assholes who think they have the right to determine who and who is not “worthy” of a straw.

You might think you’re “teaching someone a lesson” or “they won’t know the difference” and your intentional attack could kill someone

or make them suffer horribly

so I don’t care how rude or stuck up you’ve decided they are

intentionally tampering with food is ethically manslaughter (Doing something you know might kill with a hope to cause harm or to kill) and if it could ever be proved (can’t happen) I would believe it should be charged as such in courts. 

For fuck’s sake people, don’t mess with people’s orders. 

If someone’s being an asshole and you want to mess with their coffee, just make it decaf /instead/ of caffeinated (unless they asked for decaf in which case please don’t switch it.) One cup of decaf isn’t gonna hurt anybody’s health but it will make their day worse!

wrong! absolutely wrong! do not mess with people’s food no matter what! it absolutely can hurt people! some people medicate with caffeine and will wind up sick without it, not to mention it might not even be for the person ordering! people can get awful migraines and other debilitating symptoms from suddenly not having enough caffeine, and who knows what else! this is exactly the attitude that leads to people getting hurt! and if anyone reading this thinks food revenge is a cool under any circumstances, do not work in food what the fuck

you do not know every condition on the planet. stop assuming something will not hurt people and how about just not fuck with people’s food

this is exactly what I was talking about

hopefully a further addition isn’t too annoying but I wanted to add, i have idiopathic hypersomnia (it’s kinda like narcolepsy but to the left and unlike narcolepsy doctors/scientists aren’t sure what causes it) and if i dont have a refill of my armodafinil then i kind of depend on caffeine to get through my day and also not like. you know. crash my car lmao

Hi. Unmedicated adhd here. If you fuck with my caffiene ratio, I literally cannot function and am likely to get a migrane. I’m always chill with my baristas because I’ve Been There Fam, but like. Shit’s sakes, nobody is awful enough to invite a *lawsuit*.

Person with MCAS here. I can die from anaphylaxis just as much as someone with an IgE food allergy if you mess with my food. Difference is I react to a much wider spectrum of things.

I will know if you mess with my food. My mast cells are sensitive little buggers.

Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues

Important information! Insurance coverage decisions are made by medically ignorant bean-counters. Until we can dismantle the whole shitty system, know how to scare them into submission.

This is like that procedure Mr. Incredible told that old lady

Reblogging for visibility

[Image Description: Text: Medical Hack: So, your doctor ordered a test or treatment and your insurance company denied it. That is a typical cost saving method. Okay, here is what you do:

People love to talk about whether or not disabled people can work

but if you can work just fine and your disability is destroying your ability to have a life outside of work (because work takes all your energy and more)

Dead silence. Nobody cares.

File this under, oh you can be active for 4 hours? You can work part-time. Um no, I have to get ready for work (30 min) get to work (15 min) get home from work (15 min) feed myself all day (30 min) maintain myself, my home and my life (15 min, yeah right), which leaves 15 min for work and absolutely nothing else.

This is so accurate, back after I’d relapsed I wanted to try and go in for one class at school so I could still stay in contact with the education system. I let slip during a meeting that I managed to drag myself to that I could manage about 4 hours of activity a week, which the teacher sprang on to mean I was being lazy for just trying to get to 1 hour class. Never matter that it was 30 minutes travel, that I would have to get washed and dressed, that I would probably still need to recover for 3 days from it. 

Far too often abled people see the things they do easily as “non activities”, they don’t realise that for many disabled people these things have to be carefully planned and measured, and sometimes they simply can’t be done.

reblog bc the non activities thing seems really important words

I get X number of pain-free steps per day right now, which means that, for large conventions (like SDCC), I need to be in a mobility device.  I had someone ask if I used up my steps every day before transferring to the scooter, and look surprised and a little horrified when I said “no, I save them so I can go to the bathroom unassisted.”  Like, they had never considered that walking is involved in peeing.

!

Reblogging for the important point that the term “activity” may mean something very different and much broader for a disabled person with a chronic pain or fatigue related condition compared to its meaning for a non disabled person. If you’re tired enough, simply sitting up in a chair rather than lying in bed is an activity that drains energy otherwise usable for other things. A thing I knew from other people with pain and fatigue related conditions, but worth reinforcing for followers who didnt know or had forgotten.

How do any of you earn things?

We don’t, it’s almost like disability puts us at risk of poverty or something.