New diagnosis, still on the spectrum and a question

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Last summer, I can't remember if it was in June or July, either way I was diagnosed with Aspergers Disorder. The doctor that diagnosed me didn't want to make it offical and there was other stuff that I don't quite remember that made me want a second opinion though I had no disagreement with the diagnosis itself. So after much stuff I've been diagnosed again, this time by someone who seems to know what their talking about. The only odd bit is the diagnosis is not the exact same one I had got before, of AS but of PDD-NOS. This doctor said that I do seem AS but I exceed the requirements or something so the label doesn't quite fit thus the new label of PDD-NOS. My mom intends to shorten it to PDD unless talking to a doctor since she doesn't want to explain what 'not otherwise specified' means. I was kinda nice already knowing what the letters stood for from hanging around here though since most of the time I can't understand the things doctors say because I don't know what the long names mean or stand for and largely because doctors tend to talk too fast. This doctor is encouraging me to seek out social outlets other than the computer. I had been thinking to do that anyway but I'm awful at making myself do stuff like that and the few times I have looked there hasn't seemed to be much in my area.

Stupid question, if one does not fall under Aspergers are they not able to call themselves 'apies' or is there a term for PDD-NOS that I haven't noticed. While still under my old diagnosis I had come to view myself as an 'aspie' to some degree so it may take some time for me to switch to a different term.

Technically the term Aspie refers to those with Aspergers since it is a shortened form of that name. It would be slightly odd (in my opinion at least) to refer to oneself by the nickname of a disorder one does not have. That being said, there is not a huge difference between Aspergers and PDDNOS, so it is not a huge deal. I used to refer to myself as an Aspie before I was officially diagnosed, but I stopped once I was told I didn't have Aspergers but classic Autism.

You mentioned that you are not officially diagnosed. Me too. I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist who did not give me a piece of paper. It took him just half an hour to state that I have Asperger's. No paperwork, just interview. I wonder why. Was he lying to me? Is my diagnosis even valid?

Adult autistics and late diagnosis present problems for clinicians, partly because the whole idea of the autistic spectrum has only appeared since many of them were trained, and certainly since their teachers were trained, and partly because the whole thrust of interest and funding is directed at children and ways to bring them closer to the norm in time to catch school buses. It's my suspicion that the various shades of autistic diagnosis in adults arise more from the individual preferences of diagnosticians than from absolute differences in our behaviour. It's certainly true that after the primary developmental diversions, in the first years of life, there is broad diversity in our adaptations to them.

I have been diagnosed twice now and the second diagnosis is official though I do not have the paper work in my hand yet, that will arrive soon. Thank you for your answers.

I was also recently diagnosed with PDD-NOS, and I feel that it's somewhat not fair that they have given this vague, often unrecognized dx to me. They gave me two reasons, my verbal IQ is lower than my performance IQ, and my childhood symptoms were more recognized by the ADI-R interview administered to my parents than my current ones measured by the ADOS interview administered to me. It seemingly contradicts the fact that if someone has a certain neurology it wouldn't change ever. We only learn to cope with it, perhaps some better than others. And non of us shows the same symptoms all the time. I have yet to look into more details of the actual figures, after it I will know more.

Personally I believe that most people who are considered by the psychs to be high functioning often got the label Asperger's (in the States) because it's a solid, well-acknowledged diagnostic category, regardless of what other differential criteria might there be for AS, Autistic Disorder and PDD-NOS. As it has been discussed here many times before, the boundaries between these (and two minor labels) within Pervasive Development Disorders in the DSM-IV (considered as the Autism Spectrum) are fuzzy, diagnosing practice often differs from written criteria, there's no real consensus on it, and research can not support these distinctions reasonably enough. This, in turn, has resulted in the proposal of merging all these labels into one neat category, named ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).

Funny thing is that I've read somewhere that in the UK they don't give PDD-NOS dx, they give ASD instead, even now. My dx technically says (I live in Central Europe): "Autism Spectrum Disorder (Pervasive development disorder, unspecified), F84.9". The number refers to ICD-10, which is also funny, because it says it would replace ICD-9-CM in October 1, 2013 only. In the text of my dx they explained that my ASD can be interpreted as HFA (since there's no such diagnostic category in the DSM and ICD).

I hope you'll find peace with your dx, ultimately it's only about you, how you can find support to live a better life. And, in the meantime, you can call yourself an Aspie, because it isn't really different from HFA / PDD-NOS / Autism / whatever.