Going hell bent on a mission -- is that an Aspie thing?

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Lately, I've been hell-bent on a mission, and am wondering if that is an Aspie thing. I think it might be a slightly developed, adult form of special-interest traits (focus, immersive fixation) combined with intense motivation (the critically important thing that sends you on your mission). When these two things come together, you get on a mission. One last caveat before I continue, I think the things that you have to do to go on the mission are well-suited for an Aspie, otherwise you would just throw up your hands or never engage. So in this case, I would amend my issue as being

"Going hell-bent on a problem-solving and fixing mission"

My dog got really sick and landed in an animal hospital two weeks ago. The day after I checked her in, I became alarmed at the conflicting answers and close-mouthed, shifty behavior of the vets when I tried to talk to them. So I went there and looked at her, and I think they were on a death-watch. They claimed to be giving her an IV with antibiotics and that they were waiting for an internal medicine guy to do an ultrasound, but she looked close to death, clearly dehydrated and the internal medicine guy's secretary wouldn't talk to me about whether he was going to give her an ultrasound, but just kept telling me "you need to talk to your vet". When I went to see her, I saw a bubble in her IV line slowly creeping down. If you traced back the IV line bubble in its rate of descent, it looked to have been at the IV pump at about the time I arrived. I.e. I think the IV was off and they switched it on when I showed up saying I wanted to see my dog.

I pulled her out and took her to a premier animal hospital in the region, with round-the-clock specialists, etc. They admitted her to their intensive care unit and gave her an ultrasound immediately. They told me that her gall bladder was degenerating (losing its structural integrity) due to an infection and that her liver had widespread damage (possibly due to same infection or cancer or something). They said that we should admit her for two days and see if she responds to the spectrum of antibiotics within that time. Otherwise we would put her to sleep or start doing major internal surgeries.

After one of the 2 days, she was in such poor condition that they said she was not a good candidate for surgery as she was too feeble and deteriorated, and that she wasn't rebounding on the antibiotics as they would have hoped. So they started suggesting to me that I put her to sleep. But she was improving incrementally. They said dogs who are in her condition of organ failure had a 5-to-1 chance of survival.

I felt that if her gall bladder problem was responding to antibiotics, the liver damage (if it was not incurable cancer) could be arrested and reversed because (as they said and as I already know, the liver can regenerate itself when damaged, to some extent). So I told them that she was not a candidate for major surgery due to her condition, but I wanted to check her out and give her that 5-to-1 chance of recovery under my own care. There were things that they were doing that weren't quite right, like feeding her emergency nutrition dog food that is really high in fat, low in fiber, that would stress the liver and make her feel sick and keep pressure on it to deteriorate.

In the past week, I've been online furiously researching liver disease and, while keeping her on antibiotics, putting together recipes and diets that will stop liver tissue necrosis, reduce pressure on the liver to metabolize things that are hard to digest, and provide the nutrients and cofactors that support liver tissue regeneration. I think, in the last 3 days, the slide in her liver condition may have stopped and in the last couple of days she is starting to look healthy and trot and look like she has energy. Some of the stuff I have put together for her diet involve a complex theory of taste/nutrition that I was working on last month in my cooking "special interest", combined with my recent readings in liver function, liver necrosis, liver tissue regeneration and liver nutrition. I recently have recognized that some of the recipes I am coming up with resemble slightly doggy variations of some Ayurvedic recipes (Ayurveda is an ancient East Indian discipline of spiritual eating). They are nutritionally dense compositions where every ingredient has some antioxidant or cell regeneration role to play as well as supporting all the nutritional requirements while engaging the liver with as low a digestive burden as possible. I.e. they bathe the liver in soothing, anti-inflammatory and healing substances while requiring little work for it to help digest them, and they are highly nutritious. I mean, I'm coming up with some really innovative stuff, and when I search the internet for recipes having the same constellations of ingredients, they seem to map back to this ancient Ayurvedic discipline more than any other cuisine.

This is the first time I think that a special interest of mine has become engaged in something that had to be done in the here-and-now (apart from school). I'm thinking of it as obsessively "going hell-bent on a problem-solving mission". Has anyone else had such an experience? My life would be a lot better if I could harness my "special interest" drive to things that are relevant to here-and-now things, but it would be hard to make the special interest thing controllable (otherwise it wouldn't be the creative talent that it is). I mean, I even feel uncomfortable talking about it. Like Hemingway said, the more you talk about a thing, the more you define it and destroy it. But if "going hell bent on a problem solving mission" could be "harnessed" so that you could do special interest that are relevant to your immediate life tasks, I think there would be a motivation issue (i.e. how do you motivate urgent missions constantly?)

Has anyone else had this kind of impulsive mission thrown onto them, that their special interest engaged in? Did it feel like the motivation merged with a special interest or that the motivation drove the special interest?

(BTW, Dog is doing much better. I took her to a follow up appointment and the surgeon who deal with her the first day was outside flirting with some staff member when he saw my dog. Being a vet, he didn't recognize me at all (and I was bathed with my hair blow-dried), but he immediately homed in on the dog. He looked like he was seeing a ghost and had a little trouble talking. He said, "She's doing much better!" To which I said, "Yes, thank you so much for your help!")

I'm kind of anguished over this question for a corollary reason. My mother died of cancer two years ago when I was taking care of her. I thought her doctors were full of s**t and were killing her, and that she needed to dump them and go to a better facility, but wasn't really engaged, as a problem-solving matter, in how to get her out of her situation and under my care. By the time she did let go of her doctors and come to me, she was in a rapid down-spiral and died within a few weeks. I feel I was too deferential to the doctors and their mistakes, and her dependence on them. Now, I think I could have saved her had I become more engaged in getting her out of where she was and in how to problem-solve her cancer, as a "special interest" scientific investigation. I.e. if I could harness the power of the "special interest" more, I could be a more useful person, perhaps?

How I wished I could harnes my special interests, but I have gone on huge times of trying with my full might to acomplish something, a mission if you will. It has hapend on assignments in the past where at times I would kind of become obsesed and realy gone into doing extra, though I can fall out of mission and feel swamped. Though when there is something I must do I can go at it with unbelivable determination, though it has mostly been in revenge on someone, I blame myself for not pushing myself like I could have, like for do so poorly in some of my studies.

I will not vote but I have to say that when I want something bad enough, you had better either be willing to help me or just get out of my way

That's kind of familiar in my dog-healing experience, but I'm often less assertive than I was with in that situation.

Is that assertiveness about something you strongly know or want an Aspie special-interest trait? Or is it that you have an Alpha male or Alpha female personality?

World conquest. 'nuff said.

ephemerella,
I have a scooter and love to ride it around town. I passed the written test for the licence but my motor movements limit me when doing the physical test, so I just have a learners permit. But scoot around town I did, cautiously at first, but then with more and more confidence. One night last month I was stopped by a cop for being out on a learner's permit after dark (that daylight savings thing, it wasn't dark a couple of days before when I went home, but that night it was.) I found out that if I had ever had an accident on a learner's permit I would be held legally accountable, even if I were the one with the injuries or death.
I was told to take my scooter home and if he (the police officer) saw me on his beat (my office building is on his beat) then he would impound my scooter. So it sits on my patio, covered for the winter.

In my disappointment that I can no longer ride my scooter (with out braving my fears of going for the motorcycle practical test) I created this scenario, that the day after I got stopped I didn't get stopped and was in a very serious accident that was not my fault.
Even so, after the horriffic accident and me in the hospital in traction with a shattered spine, I was subpenaed with hundreds of thousands of dollars law suit of which I was legally liable.
In this way I felt good to have been out of traffic in the dark and in the rain.

as for you kicking yourself for not curing your beloved mother - give yourself a break. So much of life is out of our control, even when we can affect seeming miracles with others. Funnel your energy into the living, and work to be the change you wish to see in the world.
My condolences for the loss of your mother, ephemerella, grief can make us crazy.

Merle

I've been an activist in various causes since I was about ten years old; and I was always rather obsessive about them. So yes.

(Obsessive does not equal extreme, BTW. My first such "mission" was anti-abortion work; generally my obsessiveness tended towards spending ten hours sorting clothes for prospective mothers, rather than attending protests--which I only ever did once, actually, on the Capitol lawn. I am completely mortified by the behavior of some of the pro-life extremists--they are getting absolutely nothing accomplished, and helping nobody.)

That is a creative and constructive way to use your imagination to control your special interest. Thanks for sharing it.

Thanks also for your kind words of support.

I suppose we can't always control what our special interests are, but they are maybe more useful to society and those in our lives when they do overlap with causes, professional objectives and save-your-loved-one emergencies.

It's okay to say you are pro-life. I am not anti-abortion but some of my best friends, and all my family, are. It is something that people can get very passionate about, marching on Washington, etc. My sister in law is a Dominican nun and there isn't a contentious bone in her body, and she is very passionate about it. I hope people don't get upset here over those kinds of individual opinions.