Just had my first assessment appointment. 1 more to go next week.
Gosh, that was stressful. I was almost half an hour early, so I hung about outside so I didn't appear to be a totally crazy person and then went in 15 minutes before. The waiting area was a nightmare, they had really clunky heavy doors and the front one beeped every time someone went through it, it was making me flinch. I was worried about masking inadvertently, but it was not a problem, I managed to be myself without trying; I was sideways rocking and jiggling my foot the entire time and didn't even notice until half way through (and didn't try and stop myself, because it felt comfortable) and I made fleeting eye contact only a handful of times-mostly I looked at his clipboard (omg, that feels SO nice, I must do it more often, much better than trying to judge how much eye contact is right [...'too much, quick look away...ah, too long looking away, they'll think you're not listening, look back...])
I thought I was going to cry at a few places at the beginning when we were going over the basics (why do you want a diagnosis, have you ever had suicidal thoughts etc?), that was quite emotionally taxing.
The guy surprised me by giving me the ADOS today-I was not expecting it, I thought it would be the next appointment. I know I scored some points (because I was looking at his clipboard) but not how many, but he did say right at the beginning the diagnosis rate is kind of 50/50, maybe a bit closer to 60/40 (as in 60% no, 40% yes...urgh). I knew what it involved (a puzzle, describing a picture, telling a story) but that did not help me one bit. I found it very weird and confusing and surprisingly difficult.
The first task was a puzzle, and I didn't like that the puzzle pieces didn't exactly fit into the shapes and kept trying to nudge them straight. I just kind of went 'can I...?' and reached for the extra shapes he'd kept behind. I didn't know what precisely I was expected to do? I stared at him like a moron when he asked me how I found the first exercise (actually he said 'how was that?'...and I did not know what he was asking me). He asked me what I thought the puzzle was, and I had to turn it round to find the picture, and then he asked if I could see anything else, and I turned it every which way thinking it was a trick, until I finally said 'nope'. He told me what other people sometimes see, but nope, I could only see the same thing. I did not like the story book bit, that was SO hard-I knew it was going to be a story book about flying frogs, but I had no idea what level of detail he wanted and I had no clue whether any sort of coherent story was going on; there was too much detail in some places that I just ended up saying I didn't know what was going on and tentatively trying to pick out a few things from the chaos. The describing a picture bit was weird because he started going on about where I'd like to go on holiday whilst I was still trying to describe it (I attempted to carry on because it was confusing...haha, probably the aspie response to being interrupted so never mind). I said I'd like to go to Canada where it's all mountainy and dropped a few points of trivia that I knew about Nova Scotia. I think I gestured when trying to work out whether Nova Scotia was in the East and when I was explaining how old fibreglass boats had quite thick fibreglass, but I think that was about it. I didn't really mime sufficiently when I was describing making a cup of tea. I knew what I was trying to do, but I think I ended up vaguely waving my hands about. I couldn't do the last exercise with the different objects and telling a story (just a total brain blank). He told me he also has a boat and kept trying to shoehorn it in (gosh it was annoying...I maybe felt a bit like other people must feel when I go on about my boat). Thinking back, he was definitely trying to get me to ask him questions (oops...how come I can pick these things up in hindsight but in the moment often not at all?)
I mentioned I didn't tend to contact people to find out how they are, and realised as I was sat there in the room it was probably because I assume other people will operate how I operate (which is that I assume if people have something they want to tell me they will, because I only really contact people-like call my mum or something-if I have important or exciting news I want to share). I literally only realised this morning lying in bed feeling queasy that I tend to rely on physical feelings to determine what I am feeling for many emotions rather than an internal emotion sensor (I mean I've always thought 'nah, of course I know what I'm feeling...' but I suspect that is differently to how other people do it). So stomach ache and feel sick must mean I'm anxious. Having a hard time sleeping, must be stressed etc. It's exhausting continually coming up against new things you didn't realise about yourself.
Felt a bit frazzled coming out, and I now feel utterly exhausted. This next week waiting is going to be hard.
