Insights I have had in the past few days:

1. I really can’t skip the iron pills.

I thought I was in the clear because the month that Kitty was here was like some unending meat-fest, in terms of the relative level of meat in my diet. I normally don’t get a lot of meat because it’s expensive (I only buy free-range, hormone free stuff if I’m doing the cooking), and there’s that whole raw meat thing which I’m not down with. I eat a lot of vegetable proteins (mostly soy) and cheese and yogurt and hope for the best, although of late my yogurt consumption hasn’t been dairy, either. Of course, this is illogical, because the body continually uses its stores of iron and needs them to be replaced.

My iron levels have been ridiculously low in the past, something I first discovered as a teen when I started to give blood–and got rejected about every other time for too-low iron. I’ve had this followed up by doctors intermittently (with lab work) and the usual reccomendation is to take a ridiculous amount of iron pills and get on with things. The thing is, iron pills make living unpleasant–they cause my already unpleasant stomach upsets to become worse. So I avoid taking them as often as I probably ought to and rely on instinct (ha) and/or Kitty to tell me when I’m due for a pill.

So I’ve had this headache for about 2 weeks. I’ve felt stuffy, dizzy, tired–very tired. It’s been really bad, but not migrainous, which has been a confusion and a relief. The extreme visual side effects of my topamax (for the migraines, a small dose) have been out of control to the point that I’ve been seriously concerned that I’m beginning to have occipital seizures. It finally occured to me that it’d been about two months since my last iron pill, and the amount of meat I ate while Kitty was here not withstanding, that is an awfully long time.

The side effects were the first to drop away, back to their usual level of obnoxiousness. Then the tireness, and then the stuffiness, and last the headache (it’s still there a little bit). Ah, anemia. Lesson learned: remember the things that I already have, rather than being afraid of things I might have in some horrible alternate universe.

2. On the subject of Things I Have vs Things I Don’t But Could In An Alternate Universe, I got the results (finally) from the first clinician I saw. My overall feeling after having read his report is that I was swindled out of a large sum of money for very little effort on his part, with a dose of sexism and perhaps a side of pet theory.

What I should make clear before I go on is that this psychologist has social anxiety himself, and made a point to tell me this a number of times during our two meetings.

So, according to him (although not my current therapist, who agrees with my self-assessed aspieness, and with whom I will finally be discussing these results this coming week), I have a social anxiety disorder and avoidant personality. The report is like some strange hybrid of what really happened and what I think he wanted to happen in our meetings–he gave a lot more weight to answers that were not weighted by me, and did not listen to a great deal of what I told him. The fact that I meet all criteria for AS was roundly ignored, although he was “kind” enough to leave a “rule out PDD” in my Axis I. The fact that he did not care to specify which speaks volumes as to his skill.

The thing is, I have this handy internet right here at my fingertips, and have accessed the guidelines for social anxiety disorder (social phobia–which should have been given a specification, even if it was only ‘generalized’) and avoidant personality disorder. As far as I am aware, I do not meet the criteria for either of these categories.

Now, I might meet one criteria in SA (point D); I do tend to avoid social interactions in the scope that I know this psychologist was discussing (parties). This is because parties are often loud, with new people, and there’s just a lot going on sensory-wise. I don’t dislike them once I’m there, usually, and I attended parties on a pretty regular basis in Melbourne. I go out to eat, to the store, to work, to see plays and movies, all without problems. I believe that he interpreted my dislike of other people because I don’t understand their intentions all of the time for fear, and this is a problem within his own nature–projecting his own diagnosis–not a problem with me. I will concede to point 6 (the first part–I think I am often a bit inept!) in the avoidant list.

So he’s given me this inaccurate set of diagnoses, ignored my accurate self-diagnosis, and I’m trying to work out why. The best I can come up with is this: I am a girl. I am very smart, and I am largely self-sufficient. I was on my best behaviour (no stims, no tip-toes, no meltdowns, compliant and test-taking and omg I love tests it is a miracle this blog is not overrun with internet quiz memes yet). I have a girlfriend, which explicitly counted against me in his final review (queers and people in relationships can’t be on the spectrum now–I guess I’ll have to tell the researcher I’m helping out via the GRASP newsletter). He had a medical view of autism and the spectrum, and was not open to neurodiversity as a concept, nor to the social model of autism.

He did not ask, or wish to know about, my Theory of Mind, my executive function. I was “too open to new experiences” to be really aspie (because one of the tests they gave asked if I liked to travel–in my opinion, an aspie dream of planning and maps and public transport and endless flight details).

He asked, at one point, if I held grudges. “Most autistics do, I find.” I stammered a no, because it’s rude to hold grudges; later I realized that I do, profoundly. I still hate the kid who forged my signature on a prank love letter in 7th grade and slipped it into the locker of another boy. I lost one of my best friends over a grudge because she wouldn’t apologize for being cruel. I wonder if he would find me more autistic knowing that this envelope has only added fuel to an already well-burning grudge, or if he would just accuse me of faking?