diagnosis

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well, it seems like i'm going to get an official diagnosis.

after only the 2nd appointment i've had with my educational psychologist, she's told me that she can write a document which will give me an official diagnosis, and i'll recieve it within the next month...

strangely, it feels like a real anticlimax...

i *wanted* to be diagnosed, but i also oddly wanted the process to somehow be a lot more rigorous... it feels like i've got myself a diagnosis on incredibly little information (in the 2 appointments i've had, i probably managed to talk about an optimistic half of the stuff i wanted to talk about as "evidence" of having AS, and didn't even mention huge areas of experience that led directly to my deciding to seek diagnosis...

i had expected to have at least a couple more appointments, be asked again about stuff i had mentioned previously, possibly be cross-examined by at least one other psychologist, have my medical records checked out to see if the child psychologists i was sent to said anything about AS being indicated (if they did think that, they (or my parents) never told me), expected them to want to talk to my parents, maybe my old school teachers... but it seems i can get a diagnosis just on the basis of what i've told one person in a total of about 3 hours...

i probably ought to be relieved that it was that easy, as i certainly wasn't looking forward to having to go to see some doctor (probably in cambridge or london), go thru rigorous tests, etc... but i can't help thinking that the ease of getting my diagnosis possibly calls into question its accuracy...

how easy/hard was it for everyone else? i had heard it was supposed to be incredibly difficult to get dx'ed...

Mine was relatively *easy* too, but then I did not as such seek it out.

I started out a few years ago when my now partner learned of NVLD and I realised some but not all of it fit me. Someone mentioned ADHD on one forum, and while again it didn't seem to fit, I contacted a specialist with a massive document written about my childhood and problems.

Just before the appointment (a few months later) I learned more about AS and HFA but not much, and after the appointment I got a tentative diagnosis of ASD with attentional dysfunction. The neurologist referred me to a psychiatrist he had worked with before, I think with hindsight he wanted me to see her regularly more as therapy rather than for diagnosis, but she just collected lots of info from me (mostly by E-Mail) and then saw me for a diagnosis appointment a while later.

She also recommended a lot of books and wrote a report detailing my difficulties, although she put AS and HFA on the report. (I didn't have a speech delay but my flexible use of language was quite delayed, e.g. I repeated what was said and used very short simple 2 word sentences for quite a long time, a lot of comprehension is only becoming "full" now)