An autistic person with flu

Do autistic people get more colds than NT people? I’ve been ill for about two weeks now. I’m wondering if I’ve got the swine flu. There were people off with swine flu in the office I was temping at. It’s mostly on my chest. I’m still coughing. I hate being ill. Two weeks of doing nothing. I can feel time slipping away and there’s so much to do.

I used to have colds all the time but I’ve managed to avoid being properly poorly for about two years. I take vitamins, Echinacea and garlic. I’ve also changed what I eat to try and improve my digestive system. A healthy immune system needs a healthy digestive system. If your digestive system is letting lots of toxins into your body then your immune system can easily become overloaded and impaired. This has been a recent thing though. I’ve only been doing it for two months.

I was a very sickly child. I had lots of ear aches. My mum would put oil on cotton wool and stick it in my ears. I’m not sure what the oil was or how it was supposed to help. I read somewhere that autistic children are very prone to ear aches. My sister and my niece and my brother have all been poorly too. Why when I get ill though am I poorly the longest? I really dread getting ill.

One of the problems with being ill is recognising your symptoms. I’ve often heard people say they have muscular aches and pains when they have flu. I’ve never thought of this before, but this time I thought, now’s my opportunity to test it. And, it’s true. The first week of being poorly was the worst, then I start to feel better, and that’s when I noticed the aches and pains. I wondered why I’d never noticed them before.

Someone also told me they feel achy after they’ve had a migraine. I’m not sure if this happens to me. I’ve been on beta blockers for several months for my migraines. Although I didn’t notice it at the time, as I never noticed it before when I was ill, it’s possible I didn’t notice when I had the migraines.

Anyway, what I’m trying to demonstrate here is my bizarre lack of knowledge as to what is going on in my own body and how this disconnection seems to exasperate my symptoms. Every morning I wake up hoping I’ll be feeling better. It takes me about ten minutes to go through my body checking for symptoms. It’s impossible to decide until you actually get up. Then, after about ten minutes if I’m coughing and feel weak and tired, I know I’m still ill.

There’s something wrong with how information is received into my brain. It’s similar to the way that I’m not always sure how I’m feeling emotionally. (Assuming there’s nothing wrong with my nervous system and that the information is being delivered.) I often find cuts and bruises and wonder how I did them. For some reason I don’t notice them at the time.

I read a book by Dr Robin Pauc called ‘Could It Be You? Overcoming Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADHD, OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome, Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome in Adults’. He thinks all these conditions are linked and that most people on the spectrum display symptoms of more than one syndrome. I’d recommend it people. It was informative and easy to read.

In his book, Dr Robin Pauc emphasises the problems autistic people have generalising, this is because the executive function in one of the frontal lobes is not working properly. I think it was the right side of the brain (it was a while ago I read it). The executive part of the brain looks at all the data we receive and then tells us what we need to know. If it’s not working properly you tend to get lost in detail, which is what happens to me.

I’m wondering if part of this executive function is sometimes not bothering to tell me anything at all. So I might cut myself, and it decides it doesn’t need to tell me. Or something on the television might have upset me, and it thinks; no need to tell her. So half an hour later I’m feeling sad and I don’t know why.

This is strangely at odds with the sensory overload autistic people often experience, like when you’re in a supermarket or a pub, and you have to listen to thumping music, other people’s conversations, cutlery being dropped, trolleys crashing into things, (the list goes on). And then there are other times, like now when I’m ill, when very little seems input seems to get through.

Hopefully in a few days I’ll be better again. I know that I am getting better because I can think again. My voice is still wobbly and I’m still coughing. I’ll know when I’m properly better because I’ll be able to sing again.