I’m reading articles discussing context switches, which some people find easy but I find hard. This is not an “all Autistic people” thing, as there are many different Autism profiles.
This article sits in the context of many others that Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, discusses the architectural differences that can be found between some Autistic people and what normative Anglosphere (my words, not theirs) culture considers to be “normal”.
Throughout my life I had people indicating how I seemed to be slow to respond, but that they seemed to like my responses once I gave them. I had colleagues that would tell other colleagues not to take any quick answer I might have given as a final answer, and that if they allowed me time to think my default of “not possible” response would become possible with some very outside the “norm” solution.
I did have to constantly tell people that what might seem to them to be a 2 minute “quick question” could actually cost me a half an hour or more time to re-load context after the interruption. I have lost entire afternoons of productive time due to what someone else alleged/believed was a “quick” question.
I’m retired now.
The most recent “event” was last Tuesday, with a doctor’s appointment for my mother-in-law. To ensure that medical information gets adequately relayed, I attend appointments with my aging in-laws.
It is not a doctor I would pick, but this person seems to work for her. She needs to be comforted, and is more interested in being told she is a “good girl” than getting medical details and moving forward with medical follow-ups. Unlike the 3 nerds in her family (her husband is a retired Research Scientist from Health Canada, Science/Biology teacher daughter, and full-stack soldering-irons-to-software IT son-in-law), she is ruled by emotions and social cohesion (What will “They” think), rather than science or logic.
We arrived at the appointment a half hour early, in case we could get in earlier.
While waiting in the main waiting room, there was regularly some device that would make long squealing noises. It wasn’t constant, but on-and-off, possibly relating to some specific procedure. During that time I was able to wear my noise-cancelling headphones, and to even try to distract myself by reading unrelated articles online.
At around the correct time of the appointment we are moving into an examination room, but then it isn’t until more than an hour and a half later that the doctor comes in and stays.
Once in the examination room, I loaded the context of trying to keep the conversation related to medical things, and I kept that active in my mind. My mother-in-law is really into smalltalk (not the programming language) and regularly distracts the conversation and distracts herself, and then forgets to communicate medical information.
I couldn’t distract myself with reading things as I had in the main waiting room, and because the doctor kept walking by I didn’t have my noise-cancelling headphones on.
Since my Lyme disease I hear/see some fluorescent lighting differently than I did before. Apparently my brain was masking these things before without me knowing. I’m surprised with the price of LEDs going down so much (and the longer-term energy savings) that older mercury-containing flourescent lighting hasn’t been replaced yet (especially in medical environments).
That hour and a half wait in the examination room was increasingly painful. I was “on alert” for the appointment, context fully loaded and unable to unload or rest.
There were in-and-out with the doctor saying soon, and even when he did come in and sit down there was a considerable amount of typing that couldn’t have had anything to do with my mother-in-law as she hadn’t said anything medical yet. My guess is that he was filling in notes on the computer for his previous patient.
When the doctor came in and while he was typing, there was smalltalk. Did I hear that some person died in an automobile incident (some region of Ottawa mentined — it didn’t register)? I tried to ask if this had been a patient, etc – but no, this was allegedly “news”. Nop – I’m aware of ongoing genocides that the Canadian government is complicit in, but I’ve learned that talking about what I consider to be relevant and real things is off-topic while in public. I had to aggressively push all that into the background, and keep my mother-in-law’s medical situation in the foreground.
A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H? Where am I again?
The painful appointment was nearly over, and then my mother-in-law jarringly switched the conversation to paperwork because she wants an “Accessible Parking Permit”. She hasn’t driven or had a drivers license for decades, but wanted it for convenience when she travels with elderly friends (who could get the permit themselves, if they spent the time). This requires that she does paperwork, and the doctor signs it, but she wants the doctor to do the whole thing. She has been told that the doctor doesn’t do that, but still regularly distracts the conversation with that.
Then AFTER the doctor leaves, she starts talking about needing copies of her blood work results. Her eyesight is such that she can’t read, and any legitimate doctor has access to her medical information via a database shared within the Ontario medical system. She seems to treat it as some ‘report card’ indicating that she passed something, but then files it in bags of random papers that are then in the way of finding papers she needs.
At that point I said I needed to leave. When she said she “needed” these things and was staying to get them, I loudly yelled “I DON’T CARE” and left the office to wait at the entrance way (past all waiting rooms) until she was done. I had lost all spoons at that point.
She didn’t get a copy of the blood work results, only a second copy of blood requisition she already had to do before a future appointment. Of course, she couldn’t tell the difference so it wasn’t time that mattered or that I needed to participate in.
I don’t write this for sympathy, or for someone to write about how horrible a person I am to yell at an elder, but to share the reality some of us live with.
My mother-in-law already feels like the 3 of us gang up on her, because we regularly don’t understand what she is saying/doing (or why). That isn’t a new thing with aging (She is 30 years plus a few days older than me – easy to remember her birthday when filling in forms), but a neurotype incompatibility from decades before I understood what a neurotype was. I already feel bad about all of that, and how she feels that the family loves my father-in-law more than we love her (umm – like siblings? I don’t emotionally understand this type of comparison between parents about their adult children).
I don’t have these issues with my own medical appointments, or going to medical appointments with my father-in-law (30 years minus a few days older than my wife) as the doctors stay on-topic, and don’t bring us into examination rooms until it is actually time for the examination.
It isn’t like I can talk with my in-laws to discuss my situation. They were born in pre-partition India, still under direct British occupation and before the multi-generational decolonization project was initiated. The British are well-known for dismissing the entire concept of mental health with their notions around having a “stiff upper lip”. The Anglosphere has been behind research relating to neurotypes, and still pathologizes difference. This is an aspect of myself that will never be understood by my family, even if I had fully understood and shared it when I was younger.
