Requesting your thoughts, please

7 February 2009 at 18:15 (Arthritis, Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism/Asperger's, Coping strategies, Doctors, Epidemiology, Hyperacussis, Hypermobility, Menopause, Migraine, Pain, Proprioception, Tinnitus, TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Disorder), Tourette's / tics)

Howdy folks,

This morning I’m again in pain and rather stiff.  I know that many of you have rather specialised knowledge, and would appreciate your thoughts on getting diagnostics.

I have a number of conditions, both common and uncommon, including Raynaud’s, migraines, cough-variant asthma, tinnitus & hyperacussis and Auditory Processing Disorder, motor tics, and assorted neurological glitches including prosopagnosia (face-blindness) and ADHD. Getting these things diagnosed over the past decade has been wonderfully helpful for those that can be medicated, figuring out how to make accommodations for those that can’t, and being able to prove to others that I have documented reasons for difficulties, and that I’m not being lazy or stupid.

However, the crux of this post is that I also have Read the rest of this entry »

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Random bits from bed (thoughts before arising)

27 February 2008 at 14:56 (Arthritis, Hypermobility, Menopause, Pain, Sleep, TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Disorder))

I tossed and turned all night.

Well, not really. Tossing and turning implies far more bounciness and energetic mobility than I had. Rather, I woke up every couple hours when it was time to shift to another sleeping position. There were no comfortable positions to be had (there never really are), but with enough pyjama-straightening to remove the deadly little wrinkles pinned under my hips and shoulders, by shifting the spare pillows to completely pad between my bony knees and feet, and plumping up my head pillow again, I could reach a level of acceptable discomfort and fall asleep again.

I get plenty of REM sleep; in fact, it seems like all I do is dream because any disturbance wakes me from a dream. (An article in Scientific American describes just how more interrupted sleep results in longer and more intense dream periods.) I just don’t know that I’m getting enough deep, restful sleep. When I’m sick I’ll be in bed for eight to ten hours more-or-less sleeping, but I still seem generally stuck at six-hour nights. I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night, but it was several years ago.

The good news is that Read the rest of this entry »

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Circling Over O’Hare

22 December 2007 at 4:05 (Arthritis, Doctors, Menopause, Pain, Rants, Sleep, Work / Employment)

I am in the waiting place. Again. Still. It’s annoying.

I can be patient; I’ve spent hours waiting and watching for things to happen when doing outdoor photography, waiting for the sun to be covered by a cloud so the light is not so contrasty, waiting for the eternal wind to not blow so hard, waiting for an insect to alight somewhere, waiting for it to quit raining, et cetera.

But at the core, I like to operate and make my decisions based upon facts. A lack of (what feels like) sufficient or useful data leads me to milling around, stuck until I can figure out where or how to get the information I need. I also like to know what I’m going to be doing, so I can be prepared and plan around the other things in my life. One of the ways that I reduce stresses in my life is by limiting these free-floating anxieties.

Merely being in the limbo of putting things on hold because I’m stuck waiting is annoying, but I’m an adult. I can deal with feeling like I’m stuck on a dreary flight circling over O’Hare airport, waiting for a runway to free up. There’s no point in having a hissy fit because that won’t change anything. So why am I grousing? Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to the first ring of Hell

30 November 2007 at 3:44 (Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Eye contact, Menopause, Non-verbal communication, OMG, Prosopagnosia, Science, Teaching/Tutoring, Tourette's / tics, Work / Employment)

I’m going to send in a couple of job applications for biology teaching positions at community colleges. With some 200 credit hours of college education, I’ve been exposed to enough teachers to know that I teach better than some of them. I’ve had a course in college teaching, over a decade of teaching continuing education (designing my own courses, content, handouts & my own photography), and have been tutoring biology for several years.

But of course I’ve not actually applied for such a job before. So here I am re-doing my teaching philosophy, checking over my resume, chewing over application letter drafts and whatnot.

Like everyone, I’m really nervous about the prospect of interviews. Unlike a lot of people, I have particular difficulties with interviews, such as the prosopagnosia. This means not recognising people from one day to the next, at least not until I’ve been around them a while. I hate it when people drag you around a building and introduce you to a gazillion people. I can barely mentally file away some vague identification characteristics for one interviewer, and even then I never know which details will prove to be the useful ones for recognising them in the future. Yes, I know … I spend an hour talking with someone, and then (aside from the name on the business card) I truly can’t remember who the hell they were the next day. It’s awful.

During the actual interview process, I’m running mental circles around the auditory processing difficulties, fidgety-scatterbrained ADHD issues, unconsciously suppressing little motor tics (I shouldn’t have to theoretically, but it’s ingrained habit under such situations), concentrating on trying to make “enough” eye contact (whatever the hell that is), concentrating on speaking clearly and avoiding stuttering, ignoring the tinnitus and joint aches (and hoping against migraine). And being nervous is bad enough without those damn menopausal hot flashes!

Of course all that detracts from the amount of energy available for composing brilliant answers. So my usual interview plan is to anticipate interview questions and then prepare and practice answers. I spend days ruminating over and practicing my short “scripts” while in the car. Fortunately, I can never remember my answers verbatim, so they don’t come off as sounding “canned”.

Unfortunately, for all I have a large vocabulary and am a well-practiced writer, I’m less able to produce clear, concise answers to unexpected questions. It’s not that I can’t think of what to say, but rather that all the details of things come to mind at once, and I can’t prioritise and sequence them easily, nor compose paragraphs and then remember them all the way through.

So … anyone out there have specific tips for teaching interviews? (I’m good on basic interview stuff like professional wardrobe.) But this is a new kind of interview situation, and I don’t know what sorts of questions are likely to be asked, nor what sorts of unspoken conventions are typical for such a process, or what committees look for.

7 Comments

How to Get Ready, in N Recursive Steps

27 October 2007 at 4:25 (ADD/ADHD, Arthritis, Coping strategies, Menopause, TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Disorder))

(That’s N for an unspecified number.)

Thank goodness I have that extra 15 minutes built into my morning routine, because I needed all of them today. It was one of those mornings when I’m amazed that I got out the door and where I’m going without having achieved some minor catastrophe. The whole ADHD routine would be quite comical were it not so damn typical.

Of course, there are a few people who “don’t believe in” AD/HD. And there are people who believe that it exists, but can’t quite get their brains wrapped around the whole How and Why of it. You know, What could possibly be so hard about something as straightforward as getting dressed, eating breakfast, and driving off to work?

Well, it’s like this: Read the rest of this entry »

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Time to get dressed

19 October 2007 at 1:21 (ADD/ADHD, Arthritis, Coping strategies, Menopause, Physical impairments, Sleep)

There I am, finally dressed and breakfasted and medicated and packed for work. A storm was coming in, so it was actually, finally cold enough to wear a jacket. I pulled my leather bomber jacket and wool fedora from the coat closet, then set my purse and lunch bag down to pull on the jacket.

Meanwhile, hubby comes by from the kitchen to give me a good-bye kiss and observes, “You look like you’re in pain, or tired, or both.”

I nod; it’s both. I’ve been slow getting up and ready in the mornings, hence slow to eat and then take my meds, and the dosage on the arthritis medication was halved to see if that helps the hypertension. My HRT was also dropped for the same reason, so I’ve not had a good night’s sleep the past month due to frequent hot flashes. Kinda sucks, but life goes on.

Then I’m slowly flapping my left arm, trying to get it into my left jacket sleeve, which is absurd because normally I can reach my arm around backwards so much that I can even scratch my own back. Read the rest of this entry »

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Power surges and outtages

28 September 2007 at 3:52 (ADD/ADHD, Arthritis, Auditory Processing Disorder, College/University, Doctors, Menopause, Pain, Sleep)

“Power surges” is the common joke phrase referring to having menopausal hot flashes.

Oh, yes. Because what’s life without something new to deal with? And naturally, it’s something inter-twined with everything else. Generally when women experience menopause, it’s because their hormones are going from the usual monthly oscillation to a damped oscillation, where the ups and downs get smaller and smaller. Mine aren’t — this is the thrill of quitting my HRT (hormone replacement therapy) that I’d been on after surgery five years ago. In a mere day’s time, I went from a low dose HRT to nothing. Klud.

First I had what my OB/GYN described as an ovarian cyst the size of an orange, which cyst+ovary she somehow managed to remove from a mere 1″ (2.5 cm) incision. (I suppose that pulling out large objects from narrow passages is the specialty of OB/GYNs.) Having been relieved of that painful annoyance, things went well for about a year, and then I started having the periods from hell again. They turned into the periods from hell with interperiods that were nearly as bad — now I had endometriosis.

That was bad enough, but the worse part wasn’t the surgical solution — Read the rest of this entry »

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