I had been trying to get an assessment for autism. The GP wrote a referral for a neuro-psychiatrist for this. After my second appointment with this person, I decided not to go back.
Why? Is it medical misogyny for a thinking, feeling, spiritually aware, grieving, anxious woman to be a thing to be diagnosed, pathologised, medicated and managed with a preliminary diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy…. when my referral was for autism.
In my two visits, he did not complete any autism checklist recommended by Autism Australia or any other body associated with autism.
He did, though, seem to think that I need to be checked for sleep apnea and temporal lobe epilepsy. Now, I wear a health tracker that tells me, among other things, about my sleep and wakefulness during the sleep cycle. I do not have sleep apnoea.
As for temporal lobe epilepsy… I’m 51. Don’t you think that I would have noticed, by now, if I was having seizures, even absence seizures?
Now what prompted him to consider temporal low epilepsy? Apparently other people he has diagnosed with temporal lab epilepsy have reported this experience: Being able to see a trigger or bad thought coming, to then consciously manage your response to avoid and ameliorate a descent into anxiety or grief.
So here’s the feminist rage. For centuries, women have been subjugated and told to sit down, shut up, and be the model of the subservient wife and mother. Don’t think because you can’t think, because you’re an inferior specimen. I can’t help but draw a line between that and this neuro-psychiatrist.
Here’s a woman who reports getting so subsumed with anxiety or grief that, for a moment, you can’t see a way out of your grief or anxiety. Then, the moment passes, and you can see a way out. And as a self-aware individual, you work, have worked all your life, on developing yourself, so you can thoughtfully respond, instead of blindly reacting.
This, pathologised, is his basis for considering temporal lobe epilepsy. So, look up temporal lobe epilepsy. And you find this.
“Auras/focal awareness symptoms could include:
Sensory – auditory, gustatory, hot-cold sensations, olfactory, somatosensory, vestibular, visual
Autonomic – Heart rate Change (asytole, bradycardia, palpitations, tachycardia), flushing, gastrorintestinal, pallor, piloerection, respiratory
Cognitive/psychic – Déjà vu or jamais vu, dissociation, depersonalization or derealization, forced thinking, aphasia/dysphasia, memory
Emotional/affective – agitation, aggression, anger, anxiety, fear, paranoia, pleasure, crying (dacrystic) or laughing ” (Courtesy of https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1184509-overview?form=fpf#a1)
The really short version – run for your lives.
Or, run for a clinic where the all-female team of psychologists, speech pathologist and other specialisations, and who are all themselves neurodivergent.
On Tuesday, 7 November, I did a 4-hour autism assessment with one of the fabulous psychologists at Say Hooray. The provisional diagnosis – yes, I have autism.
The Auld Skald's Fudgel 