azhchay - Tumblr blog

[azhchay]

Jesus yes.

Also it's ok for your kid to not be normal. It's ok for their brain to work differently. Trying to shove them back into a box of your creation so you can feel better only hurts them more.

My husband is on the spectrum. Plus ADHD. Plus OCD. Plus treatment resistant depression. Plus GAD. Admittedly many of those stem from each other or are frequently comorbid, but I'm just saying it to show just how *not normal* his brain works.

His parents were the "Either you're 100% normal and sane, or you need to be committed and in a padded room." No grey areas. Just a binary of "normal" and "insane".

So my AuDHD, anxious, depressed, OCD husband kept trying to fit himself into this box that his parents made for him. That they kept shoving him in to. That they *blamed him* for not fitting in to.

To say he has trauma from this is an understatement. Trauma that he is only now, in his 40's, getting treatment and therapy for. And therapy days are *rough*.

I asked him once what could help him feel better, to be more at peace. He gave me this look of utter hopelessness and anguish and said:

"To be able to go back in time and have one person, just one, tell me my brain doesn't work like other peoples'. And that it's ok. That I really am different. That it's not just a feeling. That I am different and that *it's ok to be different*. It's ok to not think like everyone else. Or to see things differently. Or to need help understanding stuff. I just needed one person to reassure me that what I was feeling was *right*, and that it's not a bad thing to be different."

40 years of anguish. Because his parents couldn't accept that different doesn't mean bad. Because they couldn't bear to have a child that wasn't "normal". Because they kept telling him he belonged in the box they made for him, even though he told them over and over that it didn't fit. It wasn't right. It *hurt*.

He is now fully no contact with his father.

Ironically, his mother is full paranoid schizophrenic and needs to be in a facility. She has refused medication for so long that there's no way back for her. But that's another story for another time.

Tell your kids their diagnoses, in kid appropriate ways. Don't tell them they're normal. They know they're not. Ignoring their differences only hurts them. And shows them that you care more about having a "normal" child than a happy one.

Not telling your kid they have a learning disability, chronic illness, mental illness etc. so they can “feel normal” actually does the opposite. They will not feel normal if they do not have the context to understand that their normal will be different from that of their peers.

[azhchay]

Ok look. I’m an Elder Millennial and I know we have our quirks but I honestly want to know something.

[azhchay]

The prettiest toll worker. I had to pay with head scritchins so I could pass. And yes, that's her happy face.

[azhchay]

I need to run a survey really quick. This isn't serious, but I need people to cooperate and not cheat for the sake of it because it'll skew the results.

Imagine you wake up tomorrow and you realize you (and everyone else in the world) can turn into an animal (And back into a human) at will.

Please go to this link to see what animal it will be for you:

(this is random, and yes, you only get one, no redos)

With this in mind, please reply to the following questions as truthfully as possible based on your current situation. (Not an ideal fantasy one.)

[azhchay]

Ex-boyfriend has (among other conditions) DORV. Double Outlet Right Ventricle. Both of this great arteries fully connect to his right ventricle, with nothing connecting to his left. How did he survive? He was a "blue baby" because people born with DORV also usually have a defect between their left and right ventricles allowing some of that precious oxygenated blood to flow out the misplaced artery on the right, but it's not enough to thrive, and the babies are legitimately blue.

He had surgery at 6 weeks old to connect an artery from his right arm to his heart to get him to survive long enough so he could get the major surgery later. He has no blood pressure in his right arm, so naturally his cardiologist tells med students and new nurses to make sure to get his BP from his right arm, just to fuck with them.

At 5 he got the shunt put in that "corrected" things. Kinda. It makes blood pump through his liver at a SUPER high pressure, so his liver is like 3x the size. Also he has severely decreased lung function.

Completely unrelated to the heart thing, he was born without a spleen, and his bone marrow decided since it was working overtime anyways, it would make megakaryocytes to "help". So he's also on a very very low dose of chemo drugs. Like, constantly. For the rest of his life.

He thought he'd never reach 40, but he did! Last I heard he has an amazing girlfriend who loves him so so much, and he loves her just as much. It's really so goddamn cute and I'm happy for him. We may have been crappy together, but that doesn't make *us* crappy. We were just wrong for each other and I'm so glad he found someone that is right for him.

It's not all sunshine and happy endings though. He's pretty much the last person who got the "fix" in the 80's, and will eventually need a double liver and heart transplant. Something he's been trying to put off as long as possible, as while his heart and liver aren't functioning the best, they're still his. A new set would come with immunosuppressants and a time limit on life. Eventually those immunosuppressants stop working and the immune system rejects the new organs. So hopefully he can continue with his fucked up heart and liver for a while yet.

dude.

[azhchay]

Happy Pride!

[azhchay]

Of course they tasted foul. It would have been very odd if they tasted fowl.

Me to Miss Moose: I'm retiring you from breeding so I won't be giving you extra food and there's no need to lay eggs, okay?

Miss Moose: *lays a clutch of 20 dud eggs, her largest clutch ever*

Me:..... :(

[azhchay]

@talesfromtreatment @pangur-and-grim @followthebluebell

Saw this. Thought of y'all

For the record, of my three cats, two are pure Doorstep Gremlin (they Just Showed Up one day) and the third is Orange.

[azhchay]

HI WHO WOULD LIKE TO SEE A BABY GOOSE

[azhchay]

I feel attacked. Like personally, Arrow straight to the heart, attacked. I'll have you know I was making gels those days ok!? I had a lot of PCR products to verify and purify.

I've worked in biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, microbiology, and genetics labs. This is so so friggin true.

Also now I'm an epidemiologist. So I'll just write a paper showing the association between microwaving water for 7 hours and the odds of spontaneously being affected by a prion disease.

The thing about being a "scientist" is that some days you're creating novel experiments or analyzing important data using complicated math, and other days you're microwaving water for 7 hours.

[azhchay]

In my expert opinion, you are working on a piece of leather.

On a granite or other solid table/countertop.

One (1) internet point to whoever can guess what I'm working on now! :D

[azhchay]

Please reblog if you think that “they/them/theirs” is a valid set of pronouns.

this post must be reblogged by everyone

[azhchay]

what a way to announce your skills issue anyway how long is y'all's longest internet friendship, mine is 14 years

[azhchay]

Your 0's and 1's to the universe's quantum void. I need this in my life.

It's gonna be such a funny mess when Donald Trump dies of a stroke on April 1st, 2024.

Naturally everybody will think it's fake because of the date only to lose their minds (both positively and negatively based on their opinion of trump) when realizing it's real

There will be massive celebrations in the streets and on social media and lots of predictable "don't speak ill of the dead" discourse about those celebrations

Weird evangelicals will pull some weird number trick talking about how Jesus was conceived on April 1st and that makes Trump a sort of messiah and people will make fun of that

The Republicans (after they're done with the faux-sadness and faux-outrage) will stomp over each other to be his successor but none of them will succeed. They'll tear each other apart and have no single nominee for the November elections.

There will be discourse about if Biden and the living former presidents should go to his funeral (they won't, he was a traitor insurrectionist)

The Ukraine-Russia War immediately goes in favor of Ukraine as morale in the Kremlin is reduced. China similarly backs off from its threats on Taiwan.

Ten thousand new memes are made, some sticking around for years to come.

Not a month later a bunch of unofficial biographies of Trump hit the bookshelves, many with new details about just how awful he was.