Frequently asked questions

I’m not a fan of the FAQ section as a rule, but this could probably cover some of the health-related questions which people might not want to ask.

The side quest of this page can be to cover some of the more ignorant questions that I’m sick of answering.

Good question, and one I recently found the answer to.

Because of the accessibility work that I do for a living, I started to notice that I was having a lot of the same issues that the people I was helping.

Hey, that sounds like me!? Wait a minute…

The world was in lockdown at the time, so I had the time to dig into my symptoms and behaviours. After a lot of reading, I came across descriptions of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder that matched me precisely.

I started thinking back to my childhood and teenage years, and all the struggles I’d faced that seemed invisible to everyone around me. Hyperfocus, executive dysfunction, social interaction difficulties, sensory overload—the dots all connected.

Then I thought about specific incidents from my childhood and how I’d get teased for certain things, or how I’d get in trouble for not following instructions properly—at school most of all. It all pointed to the same conclusion.

One of the many things that I read along the way was this advice:

If you think you *might* be neurodivergent, it’s better to treat yourself as if you *are* neurodivergent and take things from there.

I forget where I read it, but that shifted something fundamental for me and lifted lots of weight off my shoulders.

😐

Ahh yes, I’m the one with illnesses, conditions, disorders, and disabilities, so it makes perfect sense that I’m the one who should keep my brain in check to make sure I don’t offend anyone with anything I say, or the tone in which I say it. Of course!

My brain deals with details and lots of them, constantly. If I waste time with social contracts that involve meaningless pleasantries or business etiquette, I will lose the thread of what I was saying in the first place.

Lucy Fur. I was listening to Ghost’s Con Clavi Con Dio at the time. She was tentatively called Princess Slayer, because I love a good pun.

She is my mental health coach and her Instagram account is @snarkykitteh.

And you don’t look like an ableist buffoon, but here we are. What does disabled look like? Do I need to be in a wheelchair to meet your criteria? I do have a walking stick if that helps your not-so-internal ableism. Some days I don’t need it, some days I do, some days I can’t move at all. It’s not a constant thing. It’s all part of having a dynamic disability.

I’m faking being normal while in pain and discomfort to get through the day without having to explain myself every five minutes. It’s exhausting.

I can be fine one moment, but horribly ill 30 minutes later. And yet, two or three hours later, I could be so hyper that I don’t know what to do with all the spare energy I’ve got. My body has many conditions that do strange things and play off each other.

And because I seem fine to you, doesn’t mean I am fine. Chronically ill people act fine to get through the day.

Hilarious. Akin to putting a plaster on an elbow as a cure for a broken leg. They don’t target any of the right areas and do nothing for me, so I avoid them. Hard drugs instead, please. (Joking, of course.)

No. My main migraine trigger is changes in barometric pressure, meaning unless I secure a fully pressurised, second-hand evil underground lair somewhere, I’m at the mercy of the climate. And seeing as the climate is out of control these days, it’s constantly getting worse for me.

A recovery day is akin to booting into Safe Mode or Low Power Mode, where I’ll do as little as possible to conserve energy and allow my body to heal itself.

Depending on the attack I’ve had, which can involve anything from lying in a dark room all day, to being unable to walk or talk properly, to being unable to eat or drink properly—and sometimes all three at once—I’m exhausted.

After such an experience, I often need to get back to a baseline level of functioning, which can take days or even weeks. During this time, I’ll avoid social interaction, work, and anything else that requires effort on my part.

My recovery day formula is something along these lines:

  Recovery Time = (
    Attack Severity ×
    Attack Duration
  ) ÷ Health Level

Breaking this down:

• Attack Severity — How intense the migraine attack was (scale of 1–10)
• Attack Duration — How long it lasted (in hours)
• Health Level — Baseline wellness at the time (affects how I recover)

The higher the severity and duration, the longer recovery takes. The better my baseline health, the faster I recover.

Example: A severe 8-hour migraine attack (8 × 8 = 64) when I’m at 60% health means 1–2 days of recovery. The same attack during a flare-up period (20% health) could mean a week or more.

It’s not an exact science—some days my body surprises me—but it helps explain why one bad day doesn’t mean I’m back to normal the next morning.

When I’m hyperfocused on a task, my brain is in The Zone™. It’s a state of flow where I’m fully absorbed in what I’m doing, and everything else fades away. Think of it like shutting down all the other apps on your computer except the one I’m working on, so nothing else can interrupt or consume power.

When someone interrupts me during this time, it can be incredibly disruptive. Most of the things I was juggling in my brain at the time will now be all over the floor. I’ll have to then pick up your conversation or task, try to make sense of it before I can understand what you want, and then respond appropriately.

This is context switching and can take a lot of effort and time.

• 🔋 — You wake up like this.
• 🪫 — I wake up like this.

It isn’t being tired, it’s exhaustion. My sleep doesn’t refresh me. I can sleep for 12 hours and still wake up feeling like I’ve spent all night falling down the side of a mountain, hitting every rock and tree in the way, then getting run over by a truck at the bottom.

I have a GP and a neurologist who are both good at their jobs. I trust them to give me the best advice for my conditions, and I don’t need to hear about your latest miracle cure that you found on TikTok or Facebook. I know you’re trying to help but you’re not a medical professional.

We generally don’t expect special treatment, but we do expect the same respect and dignity that you want from us.

Neurotypical people are not expected to change their behaviour to accommodate neurodivergent people, so why should it be the other way around? If anything, neurotypical people show animosity towards neurodivergent people, so it’s not a case of special treatment, it’s a case of treat us like people.