Doctors who discount the diagnosis

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I was wondering if anyone has advice on doctors who won't believe I have AS. Like many female Aspies, I am good at hiding it. I am diagnosed but most doctors think I can't have it, because I look too normal.

If it's a GP, I can dump him and get another. For specialists, I cannot replace them without difficulty. I don't want to debate whether or not I have AS with the specialist.

I want the specialists to believe I have it because the health problems (that I am seeing the doctors for) are more common in AS patients. Have you had this problem? Do you have any ideas?

I'm posting to watch the thread. I'm also interested in advice on this.

My therapist doesn't have experience in AS but is open to the idea I might have it (in fact, I am only here because he suggested it to me in the first place). When I return back the US in a few months, I'll see a therapist that does have this experience. Until then, I'm getting a lot of talk therapy that I don't think it helpful. He says I am an obsessive-compulsive thinker and have high anxiety. I say these are different aspects of AS and that neither tells the complete picture. In the meantime, he wants to talk about my mother, which seems to me like a waste of time and we just seem to go in circles.

I have a lot of weird food intolerance (casein, gluten, and some sugars) and get nowhere with doctors on this. It would be great to just say I have AS and have them take me seriously...but I personally think that would make them take me less seriously.

At the last appointment with an ophthamologist, I discovered that, even with updated prescription lenses, I could not correctly read some of the letters. Double vision was making it difficult, unreliable, or impossible to read the letters. The ophthamologist checked my eyes and did more tests, but couldn't find anything to explain it, and suggested I go to a neurologist specializing in visual-spatial problems. I think they were a little worried about my health. I wasn't worried, but I did hope to figure out the problem, to figure out a practical solution (the problem has been affecting my ability to read and perform certain activities of daily living).

But that wasn't the bad experience, just an introduction.

At the appointment with the neurologist, my sister had just finished explaining our reason for coming, when he completely disregarded it. Instead, he wanted to know more about my "history", that is, how I got my autism diagnosis. He said it was highly unlikely that a person with autism could get to 30 years old before getting a diagnosis, therefore, I couldn't have autism. He, then, asked if we were sure I didn't have any psychological diagnoses. He, then, asked if I could speak (my sister had done all of the speaking for me, so far, and a little interpreting as I answered a few questions in sign language), almost insisting that I speak right then.

I can physically speak, and I do so, but only with some familiar people or in predictable situations. He was completely unfamiliar, the situation had become very startling (the doctor wasn't listening to our concerns and was arguing with us about my autism), and the pressure to speak worsened the problem, making it difficult to answer even in sign language.

So, despite the fact that he did not have my developmental history; that he had only met me for a minute; that I was not speaking, nor making eye contact, but was stimming the entire time; that a team of specialized and qualified doctors had conducted hours and hours of tests over several weeks, ruled out psychological diagnoses, and diagnosed me with autism; he insisted that I couldn't possibly have autism, because I was 30 years old before I was finally diagnosed.

Anyway, I told him that I was not interested in questioning my autism diagnosis, because the treatments are helping me, but that I wanted to figure out why my vision was having problems, so I could solve that. He, finally, agreed to schedule an MRI. But, after the MRI, I am not interested in going to that doctor again.

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31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

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