B. Usher's Syndrome, where the child is born deaf and gradually loses their eyesight as they get older. Severe cases will cause vision loss early, but many make it a few decades before going fully blind
There are 3 types of usher’s, type I is born deaf and starts loosing eyesight as a child, type II is born partially deaf and starts loosing eyesight in puberty/young adolescence.
I know two women with type II. I don’t know anyone with type III though, it’s very rare.
It’s a very tragic illness imo, because you have to constantly accommodate and change habits as it progresses.
I don’t know if this person larps it, but something about her seems sus.
There are 3 types of usher’s, type I is born deaf and starts loosing eyesight as a child, type II is born partially deaf and starts loosing eyesight in puberty/young adolescence.
I know two women with type II. I don’t know anyone with type III though, it’s very rare.
It’s a very tragic illness imo, because you have to constantly accommodate and change habits as it progresses.
I don’t know if this person larps it, but something about her seems sus.
I've had some experience with the deafblind, and I agree it just doesn't seem right. She just doesn't present anything like the deafblind people I've met. They were all extremely impaired, lived in a special deafblind unit run by a charity. Relied totally on carers who communicated mostly by finger spelling onto the deafblind person's hand which was what we were there to learn. They certainly weren't out and about blogging about it and doing lovely drawings.
Only slightly relevant but one of the best GPs i ever met had achondroplasia so of course a disabled person can be a doctor, and have excellent insight as a result of that. That said I can't see how it would be remotely possible for someone who was truly deaf blind to perform that role.
I know nothing about how the NHS is set up, but in the US there are some states (cough Florida) that will license you as long as you complete your intern year. You're not really expected to do anything during intern year. Then you can just open up a HRT clinic or something. That's easy enough.
So I guess it would technically be possible. Deafblind interventional cardiologist or someshit would be a hard no though.
I know nothing about how the NHS is set up, but in the US there are some states (cough Florida) that will license you as long as you complete your intern year. You're not really expected to do anything during intern year. Then you can just open up a HRT clinic or something. That's easy enough.
So I guess it would technically be possible. Deafblind interventional cardiologist or someshit would be a hard no though.
The NHS doesn't have anything like that route. Becoming a doctor here is brutal. Everyone has to do all of it. 7 years I think of med school, all the rotations and placements even in specialities you have no interest in. For example my friend the consultant psychiatrist had to do a horrible stint in obstetrics as a junior which she found traumatic and would have never chosen to do, even though she would never be using those skills in her extremely successful medical career.
The burnout rate for perfectly healthy junior doctors is insane. Its a huge problem. Someone who relied on carers simply couldn't make it here as a doc. No chance. The lady with achondroplasia is an absolute trooper for making it work. She's a very very rare case.
It is absolutely possible to be a doctor with a disability. Deafblind in any state than Florida, nope. It seems she may be hard of hearing and have vision loss, not actually full Deafblind.
Also, she is on oxygen no way someone who is requiring oxygen is able to fully participate in a code, let alone rotations on trauma, ortho etc.
My favourite thing from her wishlist:
Her leg might be rotten to the bone but why not gift her with $100 skates. Archive of her wishlist (15th of may) and another archive from 10th of may with a different pair of $100 skates:
Maybe she changed her mind about the color. Maybe she's scamming random shit from people. Who knows but I'm sure she'll make many happy memories skating her problems away.
She started claiming heart failure after her last surgery a few days ago. Before this she was claiming #hearproblems ie infection of heart due to MRSA.
A list of her symptoms from 1/5, she tagged #heartproblems twice on this one
Three days ago she underwent a surgery to save her rotten leg "because she needs her leg to finish her bucket list". After the surgery she claimed heart failure for the first time:
"Doing the sugreries to save my leg is my choice. I still have things on my bucket list I want to complete and wouldn't be able to without a leg... but I'm not on antibiotics for sepsis nor am I doing anything for my hear or kidneys, I'm trying to trust the process... #palliativecare #comfortcare #mrsa #sepsis #heartfailure #dnr #fyp"
Which led to her junkie video from yesterday and and then her grifting video from today, both with #heartfailure on tags.
not life-threatening enough, for her to be on tiktok
She was already tagging #lifethreatening on January and probably wah before that but I don't feel like scrolling any further, lol. Even Death finds her too annoying to claim.
My favourite thing from her wishlist: View attachment 3285247
Her leg might be rotten to the bone but why not gift her with $100 skates. Archive of her wishlist (15th of may) and another archive from 10th of may with a different pair of $100 skates:View attachment 3285260
Maybe she changed her mind about the color. Maybe she's scamming random shit from people. Who knows but I'm sure she'll make many happy memories skating her problems away.
There are 3 types of usher’s, type I is born deaf and starts loosing eyesight as a child, type II is born partially deaf and starts loosing eyesight in puberty/young adolescence.
I know two women with type II. I don’t know anyone with type III though, it’s very rare.
It’s a very tragic illness imo, because you have to constantly accommodate and change habits as it progresses.
I don’t know if this person larps it, but something about her seems sus.
Thanks for the addition! I'd forgotten that there were multiple kinds.
I knew someone with Type I when I was a child, and he was already fully blind/deaf when I knew him. Had a very loving wife and children too, so though the illness is tragic it isn't that debilitating to those willing to cope with it/lucky enough to get support from family/friends/social services at the first stages of vision loss. He only became less independent once his old age started to disable him, afaik.
I've had some experience with the deafblind, and I agree it just doesn't seem right. She just doesn't present anything like the deafblind people I've met. They were all extremely impaired, lived in a special deafblind unit run by a charity. Relied totally on carers who communicated mostly by finger spelling onto the deafblind person's hand which was what we were there to learn. They certainly weren't out and about blogging about it and doing lovely drawings.
Yes, you're absolutely correct about this. Many deafblind people have behaviors that resemble severe autism. Turns out that not being able to see or hear social cues fucks you up developmentally.
My favourite thing from her wishlist: View attachment 3285247
Her leg might be rotten to the bone but why not gift her with $100 skates. Archive of her wishlist (15th of may) and another archive from 10th of may with a different pair of $100 skates:View attachment 3285260
Maybe she changed her mind about the color. Maybe she's scamming random shit from people. Who knows but I'm sure she'll make many happy memories skating her problems away.
Is this retard still claiming to be in "hospice"? Which is totally believable, since hospices are known for being full of people who undergo all kinds of life-prolonging intervention because they plan on recovering enough to complete a bucket list. On skates. This bitch, I swear. At least she only seems to have claimed palliative/comfort care recently instead so someone may have finally told her the difference, or called bullshit and pointed out hospice facilities give you the boot after a while if you fail to fucking die. I think she still believes she is in control and can get better if or when she chooses to, not fully grasping that shit definitely stopped being reversible around the time doctors started hacking bits off her.
Well, I'm bored and decided to dig a bit, and I'm so glad I did. Even if Alexandra is genuinely deafblind (allegedly she has been since birth), and has some muscular and mitochondrial disorder, she is such a fucking munchie it's hilarious. She's like Cheyenne, if Chey actually had drive to do something besides starve herself. Except I'm fairly sure she's also got some disordered eating habits.
View attachment 3280327
Alexandra Elaine Adams, the UK's first deafblind doctor, decked out in zebra everything, suspiciously bandaged-up forearm, nose hose, and Paige-esque grimace.
Her old Instagram posts are very generic-young-woman-instagram flavored, complete with lots of food photos. View attachment 3279978 View attachment 3279992 View attachment 3280004
The first mention of any form of illness, but she just says "recovering from a big illness" which could be sepsis or just a bad stomach bug. View attachment 3280046
That's a pretty good drawing, the background looks somewhat intricate, it must have been before she started losing her vision. View attachment 3280040
Classical blind-person moments! It's so strange how she was able to draw something detailed and color it, but the very next day she is having a classical blind-person moment and buying baby food just like the anachans do. Maybe she just has very severe nearsightedness, or zero peripheral vision, so she can only see what's right in front of her... like the groceries she's picking out.
That's a good enough sample, the rest is nearly the same so I'll stick it under a spoiler.
View attachment 3280248 View attachment 3280262 View attachment 3280265 The Young Female Patient: an alleged story about sexism in the NHS, that in reality reads about an unhinged young woman whose malingering is being acknowledged by every medical professional she encounters.
Of course she has EDS and everything else. Of course. She flings herself to the floor having Very Real Seizures. She was diagnosed or assumed to be bulimic, and claims gastroparesis and intestinal failure despite a totally normal BMI. She passed out from hypoglycemia then immediately admitted it was due to not eating. She uses italics so much it makes me want to vomit.
Alexandra's parents were told multiple times that her symptoms did not have any findable cause and that she could be making it all up. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a doctor won't actually call out a munchie unless they know for sure, right? They'll say it's psychosomatic, but not just say "you are a faker."
"I Can't Hear You!"
I'm not deaf, so I might be completely off base here, but this article reads like something from wattpad fanfiction by a teenage girl who has never experienced any disability, not the personal experiences of a young deaf woman.
Is she able to hear if someone comes close and there's no background noise? Or is she so severely deaf that she can't hear herself screaming? View attachment 3280319View attachment 3280321
I leapt with glee when I saw her name mentioned here. I’ve been on-and-off following her for years, mostly off because as decided here she is boring so I was less tempted to share. She first appeared on my radar early in her medical school career when she was writing blog posts for the student BMJ about being a blind-deaf medical student (and possibly being some sort of British Medical Association ambassador for disabled students? I’m not sure, I can’t remember exactly but I can go on a hunt if there’s interest).
As far as practicing medicine with a disability goes, there are plenty of them about but most tend not to make a big deal about it because no1curr, except the medical school recruiting people who are interested in admitting disabled students because they supposedly score higher on empathy. I’ve never seen anyone in a wheelchair, or active cancer (though plenty of remission) but diabetes (both types), Addison’s, mobility issues and moderate cardiac issues are all things I’ve seen and have proven not to be a hassle at performing their jobs. Also, at least in the UK, some study once found over 60% of doctors are mentally ill and theyre just the ones who will admit it, though it’s up to you if you consider that a disability given that work related stress itself can be debilitating.
It may or may not be surprising to know that just like some munchies have a pull to nursing, the smart and slightly more capable munchies have a pull to medicine. From experience, the munchie tendencies are beaten out of them (or they learn to dampen it down after a few lectures on malingering and factitious disorder) during medical school as it’s really only students I’ve raised eyebrows at before but it can be hard to differentiate them from the standard phenomena of “medical student syndrome” where healthy medical students commonly diagnose themselves with whatever they studied last week. Alexandra Adams is an interesting one because where she has failed she’s been able to succeed in painting a picture of sympathy. When swimming failed she became a prolific medical student. When being a medical student failed she became a prolific patient. Through this (bar the big pause in her posts that took her off my radar for a while) she’s kept the world interested in her story.
You can see there’s something off about her eyes and I don’t think she could keep hearing aids on for this long for fun so I don’t doubt her deaf blind status because that’s an official term describing loss of function to a certain threshold. However, lots of legally blind people here prefer the term visually impaired or use them interchangeably but no such from Alexandra. Not that she would necessarily be wrong, per se, for saying that she is but (at least before the visual deterioration she claims she had in 2020) it would make more sense to a lay person to think of her as having visual and hearing impairment. She clings onto that deafblind term like she’s got nothing else because…she has got nothing else. That’s her identity. And where identity is lacking it leaves a void in the psyche for odd behaviour like munching or eating disorders to fill. Think of my other pet munchie Evie who has court confirmed spina bifida but munched herself into TPN. Much like Alexandra they have a background of legitimate disability, high level para-sporting that looked tumultuous because of unrelated (and coincidentally gastro) issues, then to become inspiration pornstars who act for the awe and admiration of healthy people rather than actually working with and advocating for disabled people.
Alexandra should have graduated medical school in 2021 and she’s only just going back to complete the final two years. I genuinely thought she’d not be back and was clinging onto the deaf blind medical student status for as long as she could. I will certainly be keeping an eye on her as she progresses, but I don’t expect any major issues. Why? Because all medical students are expected to complete their degree (ordinarily 5 years) in a seven year span maximum. This gives you one or two grace years if you want to pursue research, academics, take a break or need to resit a year because you failed your exams, but over 7 years would be seen as too big of an interruption in studies or you aren’t capable of completing the degree. Alexandra must graduate in 2023 unless Cardiff’s medical school has made a big exception to her and only her.
finally, see thumbnail below. I include this because it’s embarrassing. Also, medical students (and doctors) have a duty to be honest and can land themselves in hot water for not being so but when you take a two year long break from medical school I guess you can get away with much more.
edit: I went back to look for some of her old stuff before her health collapsed (and remaining eyesight - it’s unclear but I think her vision deteriorated after medical students were kicked off the wards in 2020). It was the Faces of the NHS photography project that had me find out about her about five years ago (nb it is not unusual for registered blind people to be interested in photography as you can see everything up close in a photo. There is actually a pretty big blind photographers scene. In saying that, her project is just portrait shots taken with a good enough camera - Here if you want a look through).
She then went on to write about the background of her project for the BMJ Blog talking about workplace discrimination from day 1. There’s a beautiful collage of all the abusive comments she’s receivEd (thumbnail 2). I don’t believe any of them have actually been said to her except the staff meeting one (it is normal for medical students to give up their chairs for actual working people and if you lack initiative, which Alexandra probably does, it’s normal to be ignored). Possibly the “what are you doing with the cane” comment could have been said but I don’t believe in the doctor‘s response to that. “Go home”? Yeah not uncommonly said to annoying medical students who get in the way. But we already knew she has a penchant for tall tales as evidenced by her tube tweet - seriously, how did little Tim know you were a doctor-to-be? - which she then goes on to repeat in her Ted Talk! Finally here’s another article she wrote for a medical blog with another dramatic, highly emotional, personal medical anecdote of a doctor pulling her blouse up to show off her twinning stoma bag. it’s so unprofessional but Alexandra thinks it as a good thing - hinting to me her concept of professionalism (something students are assessed on) is lacking. Another doctor just got struck off for lying about colleagues this month but I don’t think that would be a warning to her.