Now they apparently believe I have asthma, but they’re asking me to do the unthinkable.

I just got this in the mail today:

We have received the results from your lab work. The tests show significant allergy to cat and dog. You are also allergic to grass and tree pollens.

In order for your asthma symptoms to improve it is very important for you to have your animals placed in someone else’s care.

Okay, I’m also allergic to grass and tree pollens. There’s a tree outside my window, and a lawn when there’s no snow, should the landlord cut down the tree and poison the grass?

I have lived with this cat my entire adult life. She is part of my family. I love her. If I were allergic to my brother, would they have told my parents to have my brother adopted out to another family? This is a cat who, when I left her at home but in the care of a staff person she really likes, for two weeks, when I was out of town… she meowed continuously all day until she lost her voice and then kept trying to meow. We’ve lived together for seven years now. Both of us would be devastated if we were separated for too long.

I have not lived with the dog as long, but she is part of the family too now. She was neglected earlier in her life, she was found wandering around. She seemed not to believe she was going to stay with me, it took her a long time to settle in. After she had to live somewhere else while I was relocated because of concrete dust in my apartment, it took a long time to convince her again that she was living here for good. There is, again, no way that I would put her through another relocation and another set of “Is this person really going to stay with me forever?” worries on her part.

So, no, he’s going to have to find another solution, like allergy shots or something, because I’m not going to “place my animals in someone else’s care” as if they’re just disposable objects and not people.

Yes, my language is comprehensible to others.

I did that video “In My Language” that I posted recently. I’ve gotten some interesting responses.

Several people said their autistic children (and one non-autistic sibling) wanted to watch it over and over again. One of them had a son who never hums at all, but hummed the tune from the video all day after he watched it. Others hummed along too. The parents described their children’s reactions as interested, mesmerized, and transfixed.

This is a common reaction between autistic people, I’ve noticed. We do have ways of communicating with things around us that are mutually comprehensible for many of us (not all of us, and not all the same things are comprehensible, there seem to be groupings in that regard). Our interests and our reactions are not random, purposeless, or useless, and are certainly not ugly things to be hidden away or trained out of.