Hi Susie. what great questions. I guess that is the thing with stream of consciousness writing. Things get muddled. Welcome to my brain. I think it was a combination of the bacterial infection and me not eating so I couldn't fight it that nearly killed me. But I don't really know. You can't be mildly autistic - you either ARE or you AREN'T. And while there is truth in the line that when you have met one autistic person, you have met one autistic person, it is in my experience very common for autistic people to feel too much: the empathy is so overwhelming that it takes ages to recover from interacting with other people because I (and others) pick up too much stuff that we have to clear. And I definitely can't do large gatherings. Or noise.

I'm not sure if that helps at all but I'm short of spoons today! Thanks so much for reading and bringing so much to the response column. A🙏