Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello,
I've been off work for 2 months and i recently saw occupational health. Yesterday I received a copy of the report from my initial occupational health appointment which has been sent to my manager. I was really dismayed to read that the nurse had written that I had been diagnosed with Asperger Disease. This has really annoyed me as I did try to explain to the nurse that Aspergers is a part of me and has shaped my personality so the suggestion that that part of me is diseased I find very offensive. I felt I needed to write a letter to occupational health and my manager to explain that its not a disease but my husband said I should let it go as Im wanting occ health to help me but I find it hard to see how telling my manager that I have a disease is helping me.
Would you write a letter to correct their mistake or am I over reacting?
Definitely not, I’ve got better things to do with my life than to get all hot and bothered and upset over a word written on a piece of paper. I’m sure your boss already knows it’s not a disease. Are you sure it wasn’t a typo error?
Have a great weekend, and when you speak to your boss about it, I’m sure it won’t take more than 60 seconds or so to confirm that it’s not a disease, it’s just a way of describing some of the traits you have that are causing you some difficulties.
Go out and have a lovely weekend. You know you haven’t got a disease and most people on the planet know that. What would be more useful to you would be to ask yourself why you got so annoyed over a word that doesn’t even relate to you in any way?
It’s easy for us aspies to get all hot and bothered by things but we can break that habit. It’s up to you though, the choice is yours. You can have a lovely weekend with your husband, family, friends, yourself or whatever or you can get more and more annoyed as you simply devour and chew and eat some more of this word, that was written on a piece of paper that is probably at this very minute sat in a draw doing no harm to anyone. You can choose to obsess over it, get annoyed, get inflamed, ask why people are so incompetent that they don’t get every word exact and correct, or you could chose to be happy and address it when you speak to your boss or simply ask the nurse, calmly and politely, to change the word, it will probably take less than a minute to ask her to do that but you could spend the whole of this weekend being annoyed about it. It’s up to you, the choice is yours.
BlueRay, you said this:
‘You can...ask the nurse, calmly and politely, to change the word, it will probably take less than a minute to ask her to do that but you could spend the whole of this weekend being annoyed about it.’
But, whilst PurpleFeathers mentioned being annoyed, this does not lead me to immediately assume that they wouldn’t write a letter in exactly the manner you describe above. This is certainly how I ask for changes to documents when there are mistakes - I am not ‘hot and bothered’ by them, I just request them to please be corrected and explain why. It certainly wouldn’t ruin my weekend to quickly write a polite letter and then do whatever I was doing.
So when you say ‘definitely not’ to writing a letter I don’t quite understand why. Perhaps, ‘definitely not in an angry mood or tone’ would be better advice. I understand you could think that writing a letter is a bit over the top when you could ask verbally, but for some of us (myself included), written communications are simply much easier than verbal.
If it was a typo it's another good reason for using condition instead of disorder