The Diagnostic Path Starts for me today

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In about an hour, I have the first of two 4 hour testing session with a Nuero-Psychologist to try and put a formal name to something I have lived with all my life.

Already, sa couple things about this appointment trouble me in that the doctor had to mask the real reason we were starting this testing, otherwise, the insurance provider would not cover testing since Aspergers is being De-listed in the DSM-V. So, he had to justify the need for testing based on my several bouts with scarlet fever and the 105 degree temperatures that came with it, as well as the concussions and other head injuries I have had in my life. Also, during the initial interview, he stated that the Insurance company would not approve testing for Aspergers because I was married and that was a significant deviation from the criteria they look at as justification for testing.

The need to "hide" our suspicions and expected outcome of testing to justify a medical bureaucrat just seems silly to me...but what can you do....

I shall keep this thread updated with details as I am able. All in all, I hope to find some answers in a formal sense, more for peace of mind and such.

I did not know that AS was being de-listed in DSM V. I heard that AS was going to fall under the category of autistic disorder like a subgroup My insurance did not cover testing because they would NOT cover anything related the mental. Even my dr appointments with my GP(general practitioner) to have blood test related to mental meds had to be classed as something else on my charts to help with my cost.

I wish you the best of luck with the testing Darksideblues42 & I hope you can get an official diagnoses that explains things & allows you to qualify for services related to AS. My doc was a quack who ruled out AS & pinned most of my issues on lots of other things like my childhood & physical disabilities I was born with so AS was ruled out even thou I fit the profile. All I got out of the testing was a bill for thousands of dollars that was 2wice as much as the cost they quoted me when I scheduled testing It seems like your doc is willing to accommodate the charts for testing so your experience mite could be much better than mine

Good luck! I'm glad your GP is helping you.
Just 'be yourself' at your assessment.

Good luck guy! I hope everything works out for you! But, wow, you are going through four hours of testing? All I did was tell my doctor I thought I had Asperger's and he concurred!

My GP agreed, but for the purposes of a real diagnosis and to reduce malpractice liability, she referred me to a specialist.

4 hours of testing for today is done, pattern sorting, problem solving, math, spelling, vocab, guessing the rules of a sorting game, how well I could sort math problems out with a distracting recording playing, how well I could read a word that was also a color, printed in the wrong color Like Green Red Blue then read the color the word was printed in, but not the actual letters, then a mix thereof.

Then a listing of made up words, that I had to use standard pronunciation to "guess" what they should sound like, however, once I pointed out that the third word on the example page was in fact a real word... (The words were "Derf" "Algopop" "Tiff" and "Kought" ) and when I pointed it out, he said "What do you mean?" and I defined a "Tiff" as a minor argument or disagreement over a fairly trivial matter, and then I had a minute to name as many animals as I could, and when I came up with "cassowary" he though I was making it up, so I pulled out my Droid and googled a picture. Another task was coming up with words that start with the letter F without being proper place names, Human names, numbers, or similar words like "Frog" and "Frogs" So I used the word "Frank" and he said he could not allow it to count, as it was a name, however I disagreed as I defined it as in a "To the point" discussion, and he agreed that it counted then!

All in all, a fun afternoon!

I had that test as part of my neuropsych testing, too. I had just been reading "Jurassic Park," so I named loads of dinosaurs.
I can't believe he didn't think about other meanings for "frank" rather than just the name. Did he interrupt the test to tell you it didn't count, or did he wait until the end? Given that it is timed, I would hope that he waited until the end.
A tiff is also a type of file format for images, by the way. It is definitely not a nonsense word.

Gotta love being smarter than the doctor.

It sounds like it went much much better than my experience. I had two medical student interns doing that part of the testing & the doc just came in & out to check up on em. Students kept talking to themselves & did not seem to know what the frack they wer doing. Psych I saw before had diagnosed me as AS but I needed an official test to hopefully qualify for autism related social services. Waist of my time & money. I should of sued his butt for malpractice but I had to sign paperwork before I could even see him so he could not be held accountable. Sorry about the rant.
For the next part I had to do something on computer where I had to organize different shapes that wer different colors. I also had to build some patters with blocks & look at pix & determine what was missing in it. Lots of visual stuff & I have bad eyesight so i guess that messed me up

He waited until the end of the allotted time to tell me.

There were also some flip-books that had something on each page that would make you think of a number between one and four. Each set of pages had the same rules, but the items on the page were very different.

Grouping one was Roman Numerals and Hash Marks, Grouping two were simple shapes, where the quantity on the page = the number.

Grouping three was interesting. There were 4 shapes on the page at all times, however, there were also at least 2 different shapes on the page, sometimes with different colors, or different sizes. Since you are only allowed one guess per page to sort out the rules, this one took a few tries.

More rules, more sorting, for a total of 8 groupings, sometimes there was a circle with 1/4 of it missing, and in one set, this meant the value depicted was 1, sometimes 3, other times it was important to note which quadrant the "blank" section was in.

I loved that portion of the test.

What I did not care for was he called a "White Noise Machine" which was in fact, an air ionizer...the sound of the fan and the smell of the ionized air from it drove me slightly crazy....

Good luck on your assessment. I'm being assessed right now. My last, I think, and 4th session will be on the 24th of May. I've had question and answer type stuff, if/then questions (huge, complex ones requiring her phd to execute), flip book stuff, puzzle things, etc. One of the tests was a very long (over 500 questions) computer administered test. I find I'm very tired after these sessions, which have been about 2 hours each so far.

I'll keep an eye on this thread - I'm interested in how everything turns out for you.

For some of the people who have mentioned insurance not paying for testing - I have gone to the university here and am able to pay on a sliding scale. It's way cheaper than the regular route. I can actually afford it out of pocket.

I hope that you get the anwers that you're looking for.

thank you all for the kind words, I am not sure were this will lead me, since my Mother has Bi-polar issues to boot, so the Doc thinks I have (on paper) traits that would indicate both Aspergers and a Type II Bipolar disorder, so....we will see what testing and eval says in the end.

Stage II testing was today, 4 more hours of it in fact...

More number games, 3D shape into 2D fold out sorting

Sorting games

word lists

Memorizing a story

lots of stuff

Then a 680 True/False exam....that was actually draining.

More details when my brain is not mush!

Do you know how many sessions are left? That long test is a doozy, huh? My sessions made me very tired.

I was originally slated for 4 but they cancelled the last one and told me they don't need anymore information. Now I have to wait until the second week of June. They have to go over the material and put it all together or something. It's sooooo hard to be patient!! !

How much would it cost in the United States without insurance?

This was it for me, they gave me a choice of (4) 2 hour sessions (3) 3.5 hour sessions, or (2) four hour sessions.

I was told that no one really ever makes it through the 4 hour sessions without turning to mush by the end. (however, did very well according to the Doctor)

The test I enjoyed the most involved 9 blocks, the blocks were half red, half white, bisected along a 45 degree angle through the block, so you had 2 sides that were solid red, 2 solid white, and 2 that were 50/50 red white The Examiner went through a flip-book with patterns on the page made up of the 9 blocks. I had to sort out how to make the pattern depicted in the picture with the blocks.

I got all of them except for the last one....he later told me that very very rarely will someone with Aspergers get that pattern correct, however, people with "traditional" Autistic leanings will get it right almost every time. (I solved it about 18 seconds after my 2 min time limit expired for this puzzle and it bothered me to no end once I did figure it out. So as not to spoil the diagnostic experience for others I will not explain it here)

He read off a set of numbers to me, like 2896 and I needed to repeat them back to him. This worked up to a 12 digit number. The next section of this segment of testing involved more numbers being read off, however now I needed to sort them into numerical order from smallest to largest, and some digits were repeated. Ex: he read off 22890788290 and I would need to say 0022788899. The last segment was similar to the first, however, I needed to read the number in reverse, and the fourth section involved reading the numbers in numerical order from largest to smallest.

There was a set of general knowledge questions, such as "Who was Ghandi, Who was Martin Luther King JR, What position from the Sun is the Earth, Who is the Theory of General Relativity attributed to, What is the name of the principle that states you can not know both the absolute velocity and absolute position of sub-atomic particles, Who was Catherine the Great, What continent is Brazil on, What continent is the Sahara Desert on, Who was president during the American Civil War (I said Jefferson Davis & Abraham Lincoln, Examiner said he could not count me as answering correctly, I protested since he did not specify who was President of the Union, he conceded to my logic and correct answer) What temperature does Water boil at (I Said 100C or 212F at standard sea level pressure) What temperature does Wood Burn at (451F or 233C) and more of these kinds of questions.

More pattern sorting. The examiner got a little upset with me when I pointed out that there was an error on one of his tests he put in front of me... there was a question that was labeled "True, False, or Does not apply to me" however the question had 6 sub qualifiers, and the main question was "I feel most comfortable when...." and it had the same True, False, Does not apply to me" answer selection as each of the sub qualifiers....so.......since there was no way to actually answer the "I feel most comfortable when" Main answer without the context of the sub qualifiers.....it seems silly to me.

I get my results on June the 8th, and I will post whatever that outcome is.