29

•

Robin
page 29 of etiolated. a back-and-forth intestinal tube panel takes up two thirds of the page. in subsections it reads: august 2022 applied for food stamps. applied for medicaid. my savings run out. applied for ssi. no medical history. met a kink friend. they work at an autism lab. the lab diagnosed me. the lab invited me to patient appointments. i joined a neurodiverse workshop l.e.n.d. found doctors who listen. diagnosed with adhd, autism, chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, cptsd, and autistic burnout. adults get stories but no studies. due to disability stigma (a small figure says "ew"), gender stigma (a small figure says "trans trender!"), and budget cuts. a study shows egg age doesn't impact the chances of asd, but sperm age does. asd is a spectrum of behaviors with no known biomechanisms. percent of genes? percent of environ? (a figure shrugs) studies say more studies please. we say: WITH our input. "does your son..." agist and sexist form questions are an easy fix. at least half of a workshop series about us should be by us. end intestine panel. "hierarchy of evidence" reads over a layered pyramid. bottom to top is the order in which academia ranks quality of evidence. background information and expert opinion at the bottom. next case controlled studies, case series, and reports. then cohort studies. then randomized controlled trials. third from top is critically appraised individual articles, or article synopses. second is critically-appraised topics, or evidence syntheses. the peak of quality evidence, according to current academic understanding, is systemic reviews. a skull over a ground-cover plant called plantain. the page ends with : where is the perspective of the person who lives the data? we must prioritize their experience

this is how i got diagnosed with autism as an adult in new york city.
a back-and-forth intestinal tube panel takes up two thirds of the page. in subsections it reads:

august 2022 applied for food stamps. applied for medicaid. my savings run out. applied for ssi. no medical history. met a kink friend. they work at an autism lab. the lab diagnosed me. the lab invited me to patient appointments. i joined a neurodiverse workshop l.e.n.d.
found doctors who listen. diagnosed with adhd, autism, chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, cptsd, and autistic burnout. adults get stories but no studies. due to disability stigma (a small figure says “ew”), gender stigma (a small figure says “trans trender!”), and budget cuts.
a study shows egg age doesn’t impact the chances of autism spectrum disorder, but sperm age does. asd is a spectrum of behaviors with no known biomechanisms. percent of genes? percent of environ? (a figure shrugs) studies say: more studies please. we say: WITH our input. “does your son…” agist and sexist form questions are an easy fix. at least half of a workshop series about us should be by us.

, , ,

•