Medication Sensitivities
As autists, are we more prone to being sensitive to any medication we need to take? That is my question to self and to any doctors who might have researched this and who have time and inclination to input their expertise (via the ‘contact us’ button…which says ‘us’, but really, it’s only me at the other end of it).
Do I have any scientific backing to suggest that what I am about to write has any truth in it? Aside from a few quick Google searches that suggest us autistically wired beings might be more sensitive to the side effects of medication, no, not really. I did search on Google Scholar too and I only found studies relating to the use of anti-depressants for autistic people. ‘This’ is not about ‘that’ medication as that is a whole different area into which I am choosing not to venture. I’m thinking more about the kinds of other contextually appropriate medications (long or short-term) we might be prescribed at any stage of life.
The sensory sensitivities of us autists are widely documented and commented on. We know we have our own individual sensory sensitivities as this is one of the key aspects of how we are that forms part of the process we went through to get diagnosed (or to self-diagnose, for those who followed that path). Sensory sensitivities are simply a part of the package of autism even though how they might be experienced by anyone who is autistic will vary.
My issue today is more about how to manage the medication side of things as someone who is autistic. How are we to balance out the need to take certain medications and our ability to manage the associated side-effects?
I’m asthmatic. I have been for years. Do I regularly take my inhalers as prescribed? No. Do doctors tell me to take them? At every review (when I choose to go), yes. What do I tell them? That the inhalers make me feel peculiar. They then (usually) look at me like I’m a weirdo (which I don’t deny being, but even so, in this context, that look mostly stops me from trying to further explain the ‘issue’).
Historically, I have tried to describe what I experience to some doctors, and this is what I have told them. My inhalers make me shake. They make me feel wobbly. I get a kind of seasick sensation that stays for several hours after I have taken them and lingers for the rest of the day. My eyesight goes kind of jiggly. My nose buzzes. I often get a headache later in the day after taking them. I sometimes get a weird taste at the back of my tongue. My skin feels sensitive and has a small additional buzzing feeling, especially in my extremities of hands and (less so) feet.
The few doctors who have chosen to hear me and humour me (at least that is what it seems they are doing), have been kind. Usually, the result is that they prescribe a different type/make/combination of inhalers to what I have used before and get me to try them, emphasising it is important that I take the steroid one regularly and the other one as needed. (And as they are telling me that, I try to shut off my internal ‘yada, yada, yada’ response because I know it (my internal response) isn’t appropriate or fair. They are simply doing their job and doing it well.)
Behind my ‘thank you so much’ genuine response is the sinking sensation in my inner girl of “Here we go again. I’ll take the inhalers. I’ll then experience whatever it is I experience as a consequence of taking the inhalers. And then I’ll have to tell the doctor (who must be running out of options of what to give me) that I’m still getting the same issues and then around the metaphorical block we go again”.
So, what are we to do? Do we just take the medication and learn to deal with the sensory fallout of the side-effects? Might further exposure to the medication lessen our sensitivities to the side-effects of the medication (after all that is what I preach about a lot of the other aspects of being autistic – where avoidance is sometimes appropriate, often it is not)?
I’ll try to keep up my inhaler use this time and will revisit this article with an update when I have the ‘results’ in. If you too are sensitive to medications, good luck. Let me know how you choose to manage it all, if you’d like to. Again, that’s via the ‘contact us’ link which is more ‘contact me’.
There is another experiment relating to medication sensitivities I could pursue, as I did react very strangely (and dramatically) to another medication given to me once before. It was whatever they used to induce the birth of my son. No one seemed to be able to work out why I reacted so badly to that. As much as ‘mum’ is the best role in the whole universe (for me), I’m not up for all that precedes that experiment, and I’m probably bordering on the edge of being a little old for the process of raising the youngling now, so I think I’ll stick with just the asthma inhaler one. Yeah. That.
I expect, when they have time or inclination, someone more skilled than me will do some scientific research into all this and if that happens, us autists might learn new ways to more effectively manage this particular scenario. As we live, we learn, and we adapt, and we learn. Right?
The results so far:
Day 2: The shaking was less. Definitely. As was the sick feeling and the buzzing (of nose and extremities). And so I'm already wondering if I really should have tried this 'exposure' technique before now. Oooooops.
Day 4: I felt the shaking for a few hours after taking the inhalers but only minimally. On day one, shakes were visible to anyone looking at my hands. They cannot be seen today and only mildly felt. I do not have a headache. I do not feel sick. The weird taste in my mouth is less than usual although still present. Now I'm feeling like the exposure technique might have been beneficial for the asthma before now. Double oooooops.
Many days later: I have much less of all the sensations. The only day that was not the case was when I didn't take the inhalers (because I forgot) on the day before. I already knew there was much benefit in the exposure to 'what is tricky for an individual' thing (where appropriate, of course) as a way of it not having too much power over a person, but it turns out that in my mini experiment of one person and one specific situation with one type of treatment for one type of condition, there seems to be something in it concerning how a body can react to medication too. Weird. And probably, not weird.