Because of my terrible immune system, permanent fatigue, stomach issues which were leaving me glued to the bathroom for fear of accidents and ongoing issues with unsteadiness, I ended up not being able to attend school.  My family tried to get me a school placement multiple times, but in the year 2006, schools were not inclusive and the idea of ‘reasonable adjustments’ was quite mind-blowing. Hence, I was homeschooled. 

Around this time, I developed a lot of anxiety and my family noticed I would struggle to keep eye contact and stim. I was academically ahead of my years, with a multitude of special interests. I had an autism assessment and was identified as Autistic. 

I was a good candidate for homeschool, in the fact that I’ve always enjoyed being academic, over practical activities which I didn’t have the energy for, but it was really hard to see other children my age managing to do so much more than I could ever manage. Between the ages of six and seven, I had several scary bouts of symptoms that nobody could explain, including chronic constipation, in which my stomach appeared to become paralysed and I was left unable to eat for weeks at a time. There was another occasion where I couldn’t breathe in the middle of the night due to mucus being caught on my lungs and I stopped breathing – thankfully, my parents managed to clear the blockage as the ambulance arrived and I was cared for at the hospital. 

At the age of seven years old, I was diagnosed with ‘lazy bowels’ – a frankly, quite useless description of my digestive system which seemed to randomly have bouts of simply not functioning, in which I would lose huge amounts of weight and become extremely unwell. I carried this diagnosis with me until I was a young adult. The only ‘treatment’ that the hospital could suggest at the time was to keep me on a very strong duo of laxatives and tell me that my issues were ‘in my head’.