Hello everybody, I am a new member to the group and was diagnosed as autistic aged 50 years old (following my daughter being diagnosed at the age of 15 years). Apart from spending a total of 5 years at university, and a 6 month gap for maternity leave, I have worked full time for the entirety of my adult life. During that time I have been extremely fortunate to have needed to take very little sick leave and had coped reasonably well in a neuro-typical world. However, all that changed when I became perimenopausal in 2018. Suddenly I began to experience physical fatigue, migraine headaches, aching joints, change of body odour, loss of my ability to focus on tasks, poor concentration, dementia like memory problems and a general feeling of anxiety. Things which I had previously done without difficulty, such as decision making, suddenly became impossible. I was unable to reverse park my car or remember what had happened the previous day. This caused me to loose my confidence, and I quickly become anxious and paranoid at work. I have since learned that the changes in hormone levels that characterise the peri menopause impact upon all areas of the mind and body, not the least executive functioning. Not being a lover of change, this has been very hard to adjust to. Without going into the science, the body deals with stress differently (less well!) post menopause. Whilst HRT has helped, it has not brought me back to where I was before. Over time I have started to become aware of my increased stress levels and to think of stress as being toxic…..at the age of almost 53 years I find myself struggling to cope with the day to day pressure of my job/life. The thought of having to keep working for a further 15 years until I can retire fills me with dread-with the way things are going I think that the stress will kill me before I reach that milestone. I have read that the average life-expectancy for an autistic person is 65 years, presumably this is due to the impact of having to live in a neurotypical world which is full of stress?! I wonder if a campaign could be started to request a lower retirement age for autistic people in the light of their reduced life-expectancy? The argument for rising the retirement age is due to increased life-expectancy, but is this increase just for neuro-typical people? Do you know if anyone else already raised this as a concern?
