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| First Women?There're lots of stories about women who dressed up as men in order to go to war or fill various professional roles in the 18th and 19th stories. One such "woman" even got a congressional medal of honor. These stories make me uncomfortable because I always wonder how many of them were really women. How many of them were really intersex or trans? If a person presents himself as male for all of his adult life, and is discovered after his death to be anatomically female, does this really mean that his accomplishments should be considered those of a woman? I don't think so. I used to think it would be easier for me to live two hundred years ago because then I wouldn't have to explain why I want to live like I do. People would assume they knew, even if they'd be wrong. I have gotten a placement for my student observations for this quarter and I start tommorow. I'm nervous. | | |
| I am hoping.... somebody will remember my birthday, and make it special. .... I don't mess anything up in the process of securing a place to student teach .... My body stops hurting. Or maybe just hurts a little bit? Or even just in bits and patches? .... to look spiffy without much effort. .... to stop saying foolish things .... to maintain my better mental function, all of my waking hours. .... to go to sleep when I feel like it, and to wake up when I need to. .... to be a nice person .... to be able to eat whatever I want without getting sick or spending a lot of money .... to not lose any library books | | |
| Flu Shot at Dominick's This year flu shots seem to be plentiful. I went and got a flu shot at Dominick's today. It cost 28 dollars. The pharmacist said that the only insurance they take is medicare, but he gave me a receipt and said my insurance will probably reimburse me, so good enough. The nasal vaccine is available only at some locations; I declined when he offered to look them up for a few reasons. One is that the shot is a dead vaccine, but the nasal version is a live vaccine, and a live vaccine requires a decent immune system. I've run low fevers between a third and half of the days in the past year; I think that that's a strong sign that I have a weakened immune system, aside from which diabetes weakens the entire autonomic nervous system, which is why I was getting a vaccine in the first place. The other reasons were that the nasal vaccination costs more, and that I feel more comfortable with my ability to take a shot. The nasal vaccination has to be kept frozen, which is why it is only available at some locations.
To get my shot, this is what I did: went to the bank and withdrew thirty dollars from my savings account. Went to Dominick's and told the pharmacist I wanted a flu shot. Filled out paper work (my name, address, doctor's name, privacy form reciept, and very brief medical questionairre) and got a privacy form. Went in back, where it says employees only. There was a medium sized sharps contained, and a small vial that seemed less than a third full. The pharmacist swabbed it with alcohol, energetically. He said that the vial had ten doses, and that he wished the vaccine came in prefilled syringes. I commented on the size of the needle (25 G, less than an inch long). He said I could pick a shoulder; I went with the left one. He swabbed my shoulder, again energetically. I told him to wait for the alcohol to dry, and that I wanted the shot on a count of three. He asked if it was dry enough; I said yes. He pinched my arm (not the proper procedure for an intramuscular injection, but who cares?), and bent down by my shoulder so that I couldn't have seen the shot if I'd been trying. He stuck the needle in on a count of three, done fairly well, but he took an awfully long time getting the plunger down. I'm not sure if this was due to the high gauge of the syringe or what. When the needle came out, I bled, he put a bandaid on my shoulder, I thanked him about three times, and that was that.  My shoulder is sore. When I told my mother that I'd had the shot, she said she could tell, that I was limping. I was like  I got the shot in my arm. She said she could tell- I wasn't swinging my arms when I walked and usually I swing them a lot. That's just the injection technique making my arm sore, though, not the vaccination itself. The worst part of the whole deal was probably that I had to do paperwork and the available counter was level with my nose.
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| Your Diagnosis May VarySometimes I meet people who think that they know what Asperger Syndrome or another of my diagnoses looks like. Maybe they are professionals, maybe they have a family member with the condition, maybe they have it, maybe they watched a TV show on it five years ago. And when I say that I have diagnosis X, they say to me, "No you don't." Or worse, they have to tell me that my diagnosis means that this and that must be true about me. Sometimes they assume nice things- they assume that having AS means I've got a great memory and am unfailingly honest, that having type 1 diabetes means I've lived with it since I was a baby and know everything there is to know about it. Sometimes they think bad things- that having Asperger's means I must never be on time and being transgender means I must be desperate for sex. They are almost invariably wrong. And they rarely believe me when I tell them that YES, I have the diagnosis, and YES, I think it is a correct diagnosis, but NO I don't fit your stereotype! I have a classmate right now who had to tell me that because she has doctors in her family, she knows more about DKA than I do. And because she has a relative with Asperger's, she knows what Asperger's looks like, and that Asperger's does not look like me. It made me feel angry. Some things are diagnostic for some conditions, but you can interpret diagnostic criteria wrongly. Some things may be true of all or most people with a diagnosis. But chances are that unless you know hundreds of people with a particular diagnosis, and/or you have memorized the diagnostic criteria, you don't know what all people with a particular diagnosis look like. You might assume, as many diagnosed people do, that everybody with your diagnosis has the problems that your diagnosis causes for you, and you will almost invariably be wrong. Almost every disability and chronic illness take on different forms in different people. People react differently to being diagnosed and to being disabled and to being different. There are difficulties that Asperger's causes for me that only 1% of people with Asperger's have. There are issues I have with diabetes that are shared by less than 5% of type 1 diabetics. This does not make me any less diabetic or autistic. We are all different. Sort of on this topic, I just read the autobiography of Ron Santo, and was extremely startled to learn that he refused to take insulin for two years after his diagnosis of juvenile diabetes at age 18, and it took two years for him to get sick enough that he really had no choice. | | |
| Four google searches today arrived here looking for a definition of yontif and gut yontif. Yontif is yiddish for Yom Tov or Good Day, or more practically Holiday. Gut is good. In the Jewish calendar, the following are yontifs: Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, the first and last two days of Sukkot, the first and last two days of Pesach/Passover (first and last in Israel), and Shavuous (aka Pentacost). That's a total of 13 days if you are an Orthodox diaspora Jew. I've been wondering about the gauge of the probosces of mosquitos. Y'know, the part they use to suck blood- is it bigger or smaller than the needles used to draw blood in the doctors' offices? Today I was shelving the children's nonfiction and I stopped and read a book I was shelving. It was written in poetry from the perspective of the seven year old son of the groundskeeper of the cemetery in Gettysburg during the civil war. I never thought about a child digging graves before. In honor of my father's birthday, my mother made him two lentil cakes, and put avocado on top as a fake icing, and put carrot sticks in, standing up, as fake candles. My parents and two of my brothers went to the Field Museum. I didn't go because they wanted me to open the door for the handyman, and Benjy didn't go because he's in school even on Sundays (although he had today off for erev rosh hashana), and Nathaniel is in New York. Today is Nathaniel's birthday. | | |
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