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.
If it was a typo it's another good reason for using condition instead of disorder
Yeah, I prefer the word condition but even that’s not correct in my mind. I don’t think we’re a condition. For me, I just think the word autism, is a way to enable me to understand some things I could never quite figure out about me but as we move away from the medical model of disability and into the social model, maybe we could just call it autism. I do anyway because condition or disorder doesn’t fit with me and I would find it hard to believe that any half sane person who had even the slightest inkling of what autism is, wouldn’t seriously think it was a disease. I would question the users understanding of the word disease. Maybe English isn’t their first language? I don’t know but because I’ve never heard of anybody thinking it was a disease, I would first consider what their understanding of a disease is. As far as I know, I don’t think people are lucky enough to be catch it, I think you have to be lucky enough to be born that way ;) maybe she was wishful thinking. I’m sure if I was nt I’d want to be nd, so I wouldn’t blame them :-)