I thought I was ADHD; now maybe I have Asperger'

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This is a column from www.Salon.com. It is pretty interesting I thought. and you can find his answer to the letter write here> http://www.salon.com/2012/06/08/was_i_m ... singleton/

THURSDAY, JUN 7, 2012 05:00 PM PDT
Was I misdiagnosed?
All my life I thought I was ADHD; now maybe I have Asperger's syndrome
BY CARY TENNIS

Dear Cary,

I was hoping you could help me sort through something. I’m sure others have had this same problem, but I’ve never found them, and I have no idea whom to turn to for this sort of thing.

When I was 6 or so, my parents took the advice of one of my teachers and had me evaluated for a learning disorder. After a battery of tests and differential diagnosis, the doctors finally decided that I had ADD (now called ADHD-inattentive type). For years I struggled with the effects of this disorder, which for various reasons could not be remedied with medication. It hasn’t been until recently, when I completed my BA with the highest GPA I’ve had since elementary school, that I decided I was OK with who I was and how my mind operated. But now I’m wondering if the disorder I’ve embraced as a piece of myself is the wrong one.

ADHD was the disease-du-jour when I was a child, much in the way autism spectrum disorders are now. My mother, who has been working with special-needs children in one way or another for almost a decade, has told me that she’s noticed similarities between me and the ASD children she’s taught. If it were just a comparison between those children and the way I am now, that’d be one thing, but she’s noticed things that actually correspond with my own development when I was growing up; her 3-year-old ASD student has some of the same traits I did when I was 3, her 6-year-old ASD student shows the same quirks I did when I was 6, and so on. She recently confided in me that she thinks there may have been a mistake, and that there’s a possibility that I have Asperger’s syndrome instead. It’s something that I’ve suspected for some time as well, but I always dismissed it because I know how ridiculous self-diagnosis is. Now that someone else has pointed it out, however, I wonder.

I suppose the question I pose to you is, what exactly should I do about this? I’ve never had myself reevaluated to see if I have adult ADHD — it’s always something I’ve just assumed — but I’ve been toying with the idea on the chance it could help to have it be official. Now that Mom’s brought up the possibility that I could be on the autism spectrum instead, it could behoove me to explore that possibility thoroughly, as much as the idea scares me.

On the other hand, I have to wonder how much good it would do. I’m not a child anymore — in fact, I’m almost 23, and well beyond the cutoff for early intervention or IEPs [individualized education programs]. Even if it’s right, it won’t go back and fix the hell I went through in high school.

There’s also the irrational feeling that I’ll be letting go of a piece of myself, as if letting go of my ADHD will be hacking away at the identity I’ve built for myself. I can’t even begin to figure out how to handle that. I’m also at a financial disadvantage; I’m unemployed, and while I’m still protected under my parents’ health insurance, I’m not sure how much it covers mental health, or how to find out that sort of information. (And on a less important note, I also know I’ll have to suffer at least a little of my father’s teasing: “Would you like some cheese with your Ass-burgers?”)

Do the benefits of a proper diagnosis outweigh the negatives? How would I deal with letting go of a “fact” about myself if my suspicions prove to be true? And am I crazy for wanting to cling to a disorder just because I think I’ve had it my whole life?

Diagnosing My Diagnosis

His reply is here http://www.salon.com/2012/06/08/was_i_m ... singleton/

I have both.. you learn work-arounds eventually.