So, hi guys.
I'm on my way to Caerphilly.
I wanted to address my autism diagnosis that I received in 2016 by an educational psychologist and the NHS.
I've chosen to do it now because I feel comfortable in doing it now and one of the charities that we've taken down had previous for picking on people learning difficulties and had gone through people with the police.
So, autism is a specific learning difficulty.
I got very sick and I didn't know what was wrong with me.
In 2015,
an MRI scan found a tumour but my doctor shelved it and I was very ill and it inevitably, the tumour grew, I became very ill and developed aplastic anemia and it affected other organs and things like that.
And 2016, I got accepted, well, I got accepted at South Wales University who also gave me, who also offered me a learning difficulties nurse position in the interview and I also got accepted to Cardiff University to study nursing.
So, I chose Cardiff, started my nursing course.
When you start your nursing course as a mature student, they obviously deliver a mature student course before you go in.
I think it was like a two-day course you go in as a mature student, which is nice because you've got to meet everybody and got to make friends before you started and went into a massive cohort of like 200 and odd people.
So, that was brilliant.
They also asked everybody to do various other short courses and one of them was a dyslexia course.
It was literally like a 10-minute dyslexia course and they said, if you're not very good at spelling and things like that, I thought well I'm not very good at spelling.
I have to write it out and then sometimes I have to look at it after I've spelt it and go, no that's wrong, and do it again.
So, I thought, ah, I'll do this dyslexia course course for you now.
Five second thing, you know, on your phone and then you send it across.
So, anyway, did the dyslexia.
Sometimes I get my words muddled up as well, if you listen to me, or my pronunciation of words.
So, oh, what roads are closed by here now?
Oh, yes, I think they're doing work there.
They shut this one the other day.
That was a nightmare because I had to go all the way around to go home and hit the traffic.
Just one little road like that really builds up all the traffic here, doesn't it?
So, yeah, obviously I got diagnosed with dyslexia, so they called me in to do some various other tests, and I also got diagnosed by an educational psychologist with autism.
I got diagnosed with some other things as well.
I got diagnosed with dyscalculia and dyspraxia, and then obviously the university started looking into my walking and my mobility, because they thought it was dyspraxia, but obviously it was to my knees and everything else.
And various other things.
So, I got diagnosed with all of that by an educational psychologist, and then they referred me on to the NHS team to give me the official NHS diagnosis, which I was diagnosed with autism.
So, we do find that people with learning difficulties do gravitate to our organisation, probably because we know and we appreciate... Oh, I just want to see if my sign was still up.
Yes, it is.
Brilliant, thank you.
I need it there.
Brilliant, and there's nothing out the front.
All covered in leaves and bugs and stuff.
They've got enough money, these charities, they should be putting on more vans and more bins to put stuff in.
They've got tons of money.
We do all of this on our own just from fundraising.
So, obviously I did my nursing.
I was very, very grateful that I got into nursing and I was paid to study nursing as well.
I had a bursary, a good bursary, and yeah, yeah, you know, everything was really good.
And I got into nursing, guaranteed positions, you know, and I was offered learning difficulties nurse training after, which I think was a good thing for over 18 months.
Brilliant.
You know, absolutely brilliant.
And then obviously my illness had got worse and worse.
I'd actually done placement on a hematology award and I had my blood results off my doctor and was talking to my mentor and she was like, your blood results are worse than this chemo patient, you know, that's about to have a blood transfusion.
Are you sure they're right?
And with that I'd collapsed, you know, and then told the ward manager my blood results and they were like, you shouldn't be here.
If your HB is 62, you shouldn't be here.
Like, you know, you're in a state like you should be in a bed with these patients.
The patient actually had 82.
HB was actually, when they do a blood transfusion, hematology, it's actually HB would be at 82 and mine was at 60, 62 or 63, I can't remember, when they had to do the triple blood transfusion, emergency blood transfusion.
So I am very grateful because not only did they train me, give me a profession, give me information I needed, took care of me, diagnosed me with and supported me with autism and learning difficulties, but they also saved my life, you know, because the doctor was adamant there was clearly was severely problems wrong with me.
And then the pandemic hit and they wouldn't let me go into the wards because I was seriously ill.
They were like, no, you are at risk.
You are the patient that's at risk.
We can't have you working on the wards.
Why we backed up here?
So I felt awful in the pandemic that everybody was working and I wasn't.
And I felt awful.
And that's when we started the baby bank.
We could see people were struggling.
We could see people were fly tipping.
We were like, no, bring it to our drive, leave it on our drive.
Leave it on our drive and we'll give it out for free.
And for the first year we gave everything out for free, but we were fleeced and we were ripped off and people were selling it on left, right and centre.
So that's when we said we need a better system.
We're going to start moving into units and shops and garages and go from there, you know, and that's how we expanded.
But during that time we were obviously catapulted to fame by all of the bullying and targeting from these charities, two of which we've shut down in the process and two of which are under investigation by the charity commission.
And now we've obviously got this online stalker.
So I just felt comfortable to divulge review my diagnosis of my learning difficulties and autism because I want to inspire other people that are being bullied and targeted to rise above it.
You know, because... and anybody that hasn't got learning difficulties and autism, I want to inspire you to rise above bullying and not tolerate it because not only are they targeting a woman who's trying to help people, you know, and getting nothing out of it for herself other than exhaustion,
they're also targeting somebody with learning difficulties and autism.
Obviously my family are fully aware of my diagnosis.
The other thing was I wanted to wait until Dan was a bit older so that he didn't get any bullying and harassment for his mother being diagnosed with these conditions as well.
You know, he had to take care of me because nobody would tell me what was wrong with me with the tumour and the blood disorder.
He took care of me when he was still in college.
You know, he helped me.
There were mornings where he had to help me get dressed and things like that.
You know, and it's not fair on a child to be doing that for their mother but he did.
So I just felt comfortable to bring that out to you today and I want to inspire other people, you know, to stand up against bullying.