I am a platypus of medicine: Comorbidity and friends.

Post by Joanna Capello Paul.

Okay, so the above post on my Facebook has been getting a lot of awesome replies, and I wanted to share it here so people could see what I mean. I'm gonna copy the post itself here. If people's comments show, please don't bug the people.

Here is what I wrote:

So, fellow adult autists: Can we talk about autism comorbid conditions? When explaining the more annoying aspects of having an autistic brainworld to health professionals, the genuinely curious, and people who want to learn more, I've started talking more about autism's comorbidity. Because I have talked so much at length about cerebral palsy's comorbid conditions - which, in fact, can intersect with autistic comorbidities.

Also I ask all this since cerebral palsy is the result of static brain damage; ie periventrucular leukomalacia, which is closely related to, even can be a type of neonatal hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy. Cerebral palsy is technically a result of static non-progressive collective brain injury. So cerebral palsy itself stays as static damage, while its many comorbidities march on progressively, causing widespread chronic pain, a sort of premature organ aging ahead of chronological aging, bone and joint debilitation, muscle atrophy, etc - generally beginning in the late twenties, peaking in the mid thirties, and slowly moving forward through our lives.
CP alone is ugly and worrisome, but most research is so focused on children that older adult patients tend to be ignored. It's only recently that adults with cerebral palsy, specifically spastic CP, have been studied. Our systems are... I don't know the right phrase. Degrading? Slipping? Damaging? Certainly debilitating and disabling. As we hit our thirties, many of us do get worse. There has been a giant amount of self-denial in the CP community. It brings up a rallying cry of "I'm strong! I can fight this disease!" except strength isn't the point, you can't fight, and it's not a disease. It's a disability, and it's personal to each individual.

See, I'm spastic and ataxic hemiplegic, but mild enough that I've gotten "But you don't look disabled!" all my life. Even when my left side goes through classic flexion, internal shoulder rotation, toe walking, all very obviously (you see, it doesn't stay like that all the time, hence the mildness. But when it doesn it's obvious enough to get "What's wrong with your arm? Why are you limping so much? Were you in an accident?" comments.
However, the chronic illnesses that developed in my youth that we all ignored because we figured "it was just from CP" have gotten so much worse in my now 35 years. I am in a lot of fibromyalgia communities, for example.

Now! Since autism's comorbid conditions include anxiety disorders, sensory processing disorders, neurological disorders like ADHD and OCD, mental illnesses, epilepsy and seizures, visual problems, spatial problems, depth perception problems, I want to cross-check them with cerebral palsy's comorbids, which include... all of those, plus pain, joint issues, nerve issues, muscle pains, skin conditions.

But fellow autists, please correct me if I am wrong on things. I need to figure out how many of my comorbids are specifically connected to autism so I can sort them all out, charting and making patterns and checking them against the comorbids from cerebral palsy. What are other autism comorbids?
Also, I don't like saying things like "autism symptoms" since this is how I am wired from birth. Like cerebral palsy. So I've been saying "comorbid condition symptoms". Does anyone else do this?