This is Legwork and Life, where I track the legwork and opportunities in my career as an autistic advocate, and also describe parts of my adult autistic life, including my perspectives on everyday problems and situations.
So last week, I posted about how spring was coming. The weather proceeded to reward me by snowing shortly thereafter. Fortunately, little of it stuck, and spring seems to still be advancing. I can't say I missed the birds chirping at 7am, when I'm still trying to sleep, but I suppose I'll forgive them.
The ducks arrived first, but this fellow only seems to have just returned. He's the resident great blue heron, and my spouse and I sometimes see him fishing or sunning himself in our back yard. I suppose we should name him, but in all honesty, we don't actually know if he's male or female. So I suppose we could choose a gender-neutral name and call it good.
With the improving weather, I threw open the house to air it out. This did freshen the air, but also gave me a scratchy throat. It's still a mite cold for the algae to be growing properly, so that makes me wonder if my problem isn't twofold. It's worth bringing up to my doctor, anyway.
I've already got something else to bend her ear over, as it happens. The very last of my blood tests came back, and it seems I have a couple genetic mutations that hinder the body's detoxification processes. The test was called MTHFR, and it was annoyingly expensive and not covered by insurance. But like every other test, they simply drew a vial of blood and sent it off to have Science done to it.
We already kind of guessed I had detoxification issues, because I do best with a medium dosage of N-acetyl cysteine. That's a detoxifier you can take orally. In an emergency context, it can save you if you've overdosed on Tylenol, but in smaller dosages it also supports the body's own detoxification systems. Effectively, if I take two doses in a day, my mood is better. I don't fully understand the science, but the results are clear.
I'm hoping that the more specific knowledge of the precise failure points in my genetics will help improve my treatment. Rather than a broad treatment, more specific supplements might help prop up the failure point and improve my mood climate even further. Not that I particularly want to be taking more pills, mind you. But we might be able to replace some with others, which would be nice.
In other news, I semi-accidentally got my brain stuck on music again. I normally have some type of music playing in my head at all times, but this mental soundtrack is usually quite flexible and spans many genres and styles of music. Sometimes, however, I get "stuck" and hear only a single song or album. Some types of music are better at making my brain stuck than others. This month's earworm-on-crack is Brave Enough, by Lindsey Stirling. I really like the catchiness, the violin, and the dubstep all blended together. I'll probably continue to be stuck on the album for another week or so, and then shed it and get back to business as usual.
My forays into the world of podcasting continue. At this point I have 11 podcasts followed, and a couple more in "trials." Most of them update once a week, or once every two weeks, so I don't anticipate having huge issues keeping current with them. I'm also finding my initial dismay with understanding podcasters to be somewhat overblown. The vast majority of the podcasts I've listened to were comprehensible. Even the one run by a guy with cerebral palsy and a definite, though minimal, accent because of it. (I call it an accent rather than a speech impediment because I have about as much trouble understanding it as I do any given foreign accent.)
Thus far, permanent residents in my podcast collection include: MBMBaM (the one that started this whole thing), Myths and Legends, Fictional, and Invisibilia. Only the lattermost might show up in this blog, but I'm hoping to find others to recommend to you at a later point.
So last week, I posted about how spring was coming. The weather proceeded to reward me by snowing shortly thereafter. Fortunately, little of it stuck, and spring seems to still be advancing. I can't say I missed the birds chirping at 7am, when I'm still trying to sleep, but I suppose I'll forgive them.
The ducks arrived first, but this fellow only seems to have just returned. He's the resident great blue heron, and my spouse and I sometimes see him fishing or sunning himself in our back yard. I suppose we should name him, but in all honesty, we don't actually know if he's male or female. So I suppose we could choose a gender-neutral name and call it good.
With the improving weather, I threw open the house to air it out. This did freshen the air, but also gave me a scratchy throat. It's still a mite cold for the algae to be growing properly, so that makes me wonder if my problem isn't twofold. It's worth bringing up to my doctor, anyway.
I've already got something else to bend her ear over, as it happens. The very last of my blood tests came back, and it seems I have a couple genetic mutations that hinder the body's detoxification processes. The test was called MTHFR, and it was annoyingly expensive and not covered by insurance. But like every other test, they simply drew a vial of blood and sent it off to have Science done to it.
We already kind of guessed I had detoxification issues, because I do best with a medium dosage of N-acetyl cysteine. That's a detoxifier you can take orally. In an emergency context, it can save you if you've overdosed on Tylenol, but in smaller dosages it also supports the body's own detoxification systems. Effectively, if I take two doses in a day, my mood is better. I don't fully understand the science, but the results are clear.
I'm hoping that the more specific knowledge of the precise failure points in my genetics will help improve my treatment. Rather than a broad treatment, more specific supplements might help prop up the failure point and improve my mood climate even further. Not that I particularly want to be taking more pills, mind you. But we might be able to replace some with others, which would be nice.
In other news, I semi-accidentally got my brain stuck on music again. I normally have some type of music playing in my head at all times, but this mental soundtrack is usually quite flexible and spans many genres and styles of music. Sometimes, however, I get "stuck" and hear only a single song or album. Some types of music are better at making my brain stuck than others. This month's earworm-on-crack is Brave Enough, by Lindsey Stirling. I really like the catchiness, the violin, and the dubstep all blended together. I'll probably continue to be stuck on the album for another week or so, and then shed it and get back to business as usual.
My forays into the world of podcasting continue. At this point I have 11 podcasts followed, and a couple more in "trials." Most of them update once a week, or once every two weeks, so I don't anticipate having huge issues keeping current with them. I'm also finding my initial dismay with understanding podcasters to be somewhat overblown. The vast majority of the podcasts I've listened to were comprehensible. Even the one run by a guy with cerebral palsy and a definite, though minimal, accent because of it. (I call it an accent rather than a speech impediment because I have about as much trouble understanding it as I do any given foreign accent.)
Thus far, permanent residents in my podcast collection include: MBMBaM (the one that started this whole thing), Myths and Legends, Fictional, and Invisibilia. Only the lattermost might show up in this blog, but I'm hoping to find others to recommend to you at a later point.
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