I'm about to seek a referral

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I've finally booked an appointment with my GP for a referral for an AS diagnosis.

I've been rehearsing so much I can barely focus on the subject any more, so I thought I'd best take the plunge. I'll be going there tomorrow evening.

The surgery hasn't impressed me so far - I asked if they had anybody who knew about autism/Aspergers.....they went off to check.....came back and said "all the GPs are very good" - why do I smell a rat?

Anyway, naturally I'm scared, even though logically it barely matters what the GP says or how badly I do. I can always go private, and even if the NHS grants my wish, if the waiting list is very long I'll probably do that anyway. Something about the process of asking the NHS for help on anything remotely woolly just fills me with dread. I've got a few bad memories about coming away from the place with nothing, and feeling like a hypochondriac.

So maybe it's more about trying to break that particular mould - the real fear is that I won't be able to express myself and will have to face the fact that I may never be able to get what I want from health professionals, but will be doomed to a life of being fobbed off with nothing.

Anyway, "high noon" approaches (gulp!)......wish me luck, chums.

good luck hope everything goes ok

Thanks, Reaper I was starting to think the whole of WP was going to ignore my plight - glad you proved that theory wrong.

The clock ticks.....3 hours and 20 minutes to go before the "fun" begins. I'll be back with a progress report when it's over.

Good luck to you

Thanks, HostileBanana

actually most people log in only at nigth thats most active time for me too

I hope a diagnosis will help Good luck

A diagnosis has really helped me.
Bear in mind some member of the medical profession still perceive various presentations of an ASD as quack medicine stuff.
I have a really good doctor, but I was surprised by his lack of knowledge and what i later suspected was his cynicism.

good luck on your journey. i hope it all works really well for you.

progress report?

So do I......and thanks for your good wishes.



Thanks, Millie.......this particular one showed no cynicism, so I guess I was lucky. Here's what happened:

I nearly fell out of my tree when the GP said I can have a referral. And she reckons the waiting list is likely to be not more than 4 months

The entire experience was nothing like what I was expecting (apart from the customary wait of about an hour). I thought I'd get a lot of resistance and that I'd have to be really assertive. Nothing of the kind. I was appalled by her "bedside manner" - patronising is putting it mildly. She wouldn't let me get more than half a sentence out before she cut right through it with her response......totally leading the whole thing. I felt I was being treated like a half-wit, and longed to have a go at wresting the dialogue onto an equal footing, but as she seemed to be giving me what I want, I thought I'd best let her manner go unchallenged. But it bothers me that I was robbed of the chance to even up the doctor-patient relationship and flex my assertiveness. If in the future the GP doesn't wish to help me over some problem or other, I've learned nothing about how to act like an equal, and I suspect she prefers it that way - I got the biscuit I asked for, but not the control over the biscuit barrel.

The wad of test results were ignored - she asked me to put those away (heck, I wasn't going to go through them in detail), though maybe the fact that I had them convinced her that I was prepared for a fight. She asked me where I'd got the idea from that I might have AS - I explained that my wife had first alerted me to the idea. She asked whether it was really me or perhaps my wife who wanted me to have the DX. (I answered that it's me).

She said that some people with AS do fine without any intervention, and asked whether I thought my life was OK or whether it had all been quite a sad story (I answered that it was the latter). And she asked me what use a DX would be to me - I explained how not knowing made it hard to know whether this or that problem was AS or not, and so it was hard to know what to do about it (she said don't forget that even a proper DX isn't an absolute certainty, I said I realised that). I mentioned that a lot of my problems at work seemed to be AS-related and that I felt I couldn't explain that to them or get them to understand without a firm diagnosis.

She warned me that once a DX was done, there was no turning back. And that if I wanted the documents I'd brought with me to go into my patient notes, then that was OK, but that again once they were there, they were there for good. I said I'd hang onto them for the time being.

And that's about all. Wasn't really all that hard, as it turned out. She said something about new measures to speed up the waiting lists. No mention of any need to fight for funding either, though this is Leicester and the DX would be in Liverpool (which is strange because I know of at least one diagnostician in Leicester), so I would have thought that would be an (expensive) out-of-area referral - almost makes me want to go out and vote Labour.

So now all I have to do is to decide whether to go private anyway - that way I might be able to be more selective about who to tell, and the NHS result might not be ready in time to save me from the deeply Aspie-unfriendly seasonal work that my employer has in store for me in a few months' time. If that work becomes traumatic and the referral is still nowhere in sight, I'm in trouble. They tend to ratchet up the expectations every year, you see, on the grounds of the experience I'm deemed to have acquired, and last year was horrible enough.

Gee. At least I can monologue at my Australian GP! i would have bopped her or bustled in with my loud voice and verbal diatribing.

As you say, you got the bicky, so that is good.
It seems as if a dx in your country and in the States is a stigmatising issue?

Here it is more private - although who knows - suppose i am so used to labels and "the system" that the ideal of being stigmatised is of no consequence to me. my profession is full of weirdos so that is good too.

I had to wait about 5 months for a double appointment for a diagnosis. It was worth it.
the best thing is that i am implementing so many CBT strategies specifically to help with issues that relate to ASD.
It has revolutionised my life.

Good luck on your journey. keep us updated. And I hope a dx and the strategies suggested - and there ARE strategies that help us without changing our autism - can help you and your wife live more fully, peacefully and happily. That is what matters.

Congrats!
Maybe the GP was doing that on purpose to see if you would react 'aspie-like'.

It's nice to see this went so well, since it should give hope to those reluctant on getting a diagnosis.

In the UK they're obsessed with "efficiency" which means seeing as many patients as possible per hour. I guess that's why this GP has acquired the dubious art of wresting the lead in the conversation whenever possible, which she does so by interrupting frequently. To give credit where credit is due, she did get through the essential material very quickly, and I guess she must have heard enough of what I said to draw concusions and give me what I wanted. But it felt extremely demeaning. Maybe she's on stimulants?


Well, I got a verbal promise of the bicky at a stated time in the future....I guess it's unlikely they'll break that promise, unless the Tories get into power and claw back the funding, which is unlikely to happen within the next few months.


So she appeared to be suggesting, what with this "I can put your documents with your patient notes, but once they're in there, theres no turning back," though I've seen no evidence of any stigma in the circles I move in - in fact apart from my wife, a counsellor and the GP, I've never met anybody who even knows what AS is. Maybe it's something to do with possible loss of opportunities that might arise from (e.g.) job application forms with the question "do you have any disabilities?" But I already have a job, and a disability would make it more, not less, secure. Insurance for driving could possibly be an issue, though AS isn't a bar to holding a license as such. And I have no immediate plans to drive.


So is mine, and my employers value their non-discriminatory image so much that I'd expect more respect, not less. One of my chief reasons for getting DXed is to insure myself (as far as is reasonable) against being forced to do "aspie unfriendly" work, and against being misunderstood, castigated, threatened and disciplined for failing to do it properly. Frankly I think my problems are likely to be greater if the DX turns out negative, though I can't see what else it can be, apart from a bizarre form of hypochondria.


Good to hear that......I sense I've been applying my own cognitive therapy to myself all my life, though I always thought I was just studying human nature and correcting my misconceptions as I discovered them. I'd like to try a little AS-specific CBT, if I can find a good coach. Frankly I haven't noticed any good teachers of anything for a long time though.


Thanks.....if I can just start to feel less stress from the job then I reckon that will help immensely. I'll probably retire soon anyway, and with all that time and freedom I think I'll feel a lot better. And I know that warm, tolerant, and respectful people exist with whom I can feel loved and safe. And I will be reporting my adventures with the DX here on WP.


It would have served her right if I'd had a meltdown, though I just don't have those, and I always expect that even losing my temper will do me more harm than good.....funnily enough she didn't show any interest in whether or not I had any symptoms, as far as I could tell. My eye contact was even worse than it usually is, mostly I was staring at a strange box on the wall. Must have been the only time ever that poor eye contact was helpful to my case, though in truth I don't know if she even knew about the eye contact thing, and I felt terrible about doing that, because usually it's probably taken as a sign that I'm not being honest ("he can't look me in the eye, so he's making it up"). But she was so domineering that it was either that or a brazen threat-stare that preludes an attack. Maybe it was just the thickness of my wad of questionnaire results that convinced her. I used to have a similar thick file of failed job applications that the social security people never read so much as one page of, though I offered it to them whenever they asked me if I was actively seeking work.

And yes, I too hope my experiences give other people hope. Certainly in Leicester, UK, right now, the money seems to be there for a DX, even for adults who aren't assertive by nature. And I'm not the first case round here that's found that. So if you want a DX in the UK, get in quick because if the Tories get into power (as they quite likely will), that funding might not be up for grabs much longer. I saw what they did to the NHS last time.

^

Was it something specific in that lot that was funny, or was it more or less the whole post?

I can never work out when I'm being humorous.

^
1.reference to gp and stimulants.
2. " to funding being clawed back by tories.
3. bizarre form of hypochondria.
4. thickness of wad of questionnaires


and a few other little comments.
i wish you well with it all.