I’m Autistic and I won’t be proving I’m fit to drive
Since the ABC article ‘Autistic drivers could find their licences in legal limbo’ dropped last week, there has been the usual, and understandable, flurry of chatter online and in the media about what this all means for Autistic people who currently, or plan to, drive in Australia. The sad thing is that it means many things – most of them…
Advice for the Autistic child I never knew
If you’re the parent of a child (or children) who’s Autistic, or who you think might be, I want you to sit up and take particular notice of this post. And if you’re not – well, I hope you’ll continue reading anyway. Because this post is all about advice, for the Autistic children who will grow up to be Autistic…
Patient care taking a backseat to the business of health
I don’t think very much of doctors, or any “brand” of health professional really – except for the nurses that tend to do most of the heavy lifting. I haven’t come to this opinion lightly or quickly. For more than a decade I registered international health practitioners coming to work in Queensland, sat on committees with doctors as they assessed…
Is Autism the reason I’m so “careful” with money?
This week hasn’t gone at all the way I’d planned it to – thanks to the NDIS making a royal mess of my application for a simple plan variation, and a belligerent brush turkey that decided our yard was its idea of a four-star hotel. [More on both those topics in the coming weeks!] So generally crappy has this week…
Myths and misinformation: setting the record straight on Autism
In researching many of the stories I’ve written these past six months, it has sometimes been difficult to discern fiction from fact. And if it’s difficult for me – someone with a vested interest in finding out the ‘truth’ about Autism, who is indeed Autistic – what hope is there for the average person casually searching the internet? If you’re…
Autism: many things to many different people
To most people, Autism is a word. One they’ve heard rarely, most likely on TV – during a news bulletin perhaps – or in a movie. That’s how it was for me, too, before I received my diagnosis. Autism was a word that was a synonym for a type of intellectual disability. But, Autistic people had special talents, like the…