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Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 139 , Friday 15/03/2024

TL:DR Got up, got diagnosed as ASD! Booze & a bit of murder & mayhem !

So we move to a new beginning, life as a diagnosed Neurodivergent (I like the term Neuro Spicy , so guess what I’ll be using from now on ) Autistic, would be Squirrel! (Squirrel diagnosis coming soon! ).

To start at the beginning…

Woke up just before the alarm went off at 6am, leapt athletically (or is that arthritically ) out of bed , yelped as I landed on my currently buggered right foot, took 5 paces , remembered my watch (gotta catch all those pesky steps ! )hopped back to bed , put my watch on then set out again! Did what I needed to & headed down to make breakfast.

I was anxious as hell, the last 138 days (give or take) have been leading to today , what if , in my SOP , I messed up, forgot important stuff , hid underneath the desk (oh yes that was defo on the cards! ). Eeek !

Got my act into gear after breakfast, did my chores & then headed back upstairs to start to prepare for the Diagnostic Assessment at 10:45.

Tidied my desk (i.e. hid everything that was on the desk under the desk) , made my bed , dusted the room to within an inch of its life!

The clock hit 7:45am …. Bugger what to do for the next 3 hours ! Could not settle, nothing appealed & what was worse, the appointment still showed as ‘provisional’ without a video conference link or anything !

Herself buggered off to work at 8am, so now I’m on my own, anxiety levels raising, brain running in a 1000 directions ! I was like a bluebottle banging against the kitchen window on a sunny day !

At 10:30 I gave up on getting notification of the meeting & started planning how to arrange a new appointment.

At 10:46 I got a text with a link for the Assessment !!
Apparently there had been tech issues that they managed to fix, just in time !

I won’t bore you with the details of the assessment, other than to say that I had 2 Consultants & student( observing). After 50 minutes the questions stopped & Ian, the lead Consultant , told me that he was sure that I had Autism & would be writing to my GP to advise them. He also suggested that there was evidence that I might have ADHD too!
There was another 10 minutes or so of ‘next steps’ stuff, talk of a couple more assessments etc, then we were done !

Finished the day with a kebab pizza (truly sitting on the fence there ! ) & a few drinks to celebrate getting this far , along with a couple of episodes of ‘Silent Witness’

Final Thoughts.

I am happy & I am relieved! 56 years & 138 days have lead to this diagnosis , now I have a name to put to that which makes me different.

After all this time I can actually start to look, with confidence , at ways to open a Squirrel shaped hole in the world for me to exist in.

I am not naive enough to thing that that new path ahead of me will be any easier than the path has behind me has been, but I look at the world with fresh eyes & fresh insight, so maybe life will become something to look forward to rather than something to regret !

Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you!

@actuallyautistic
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #TheMammutMoves