I am now 70 and was self diagnosed while in my early 60s and still working. I was an RN and expected the medical community to be interested and open to learning about AS. They weren't. Most people consider autism related behavior to be a mental illness and they don't give a damn about the mentally ill. One friend, and RN with Psych experience, made it clear that now that I understood why I was so weird, all I had to do is remember not to act weird. My feelings were not taken in to consideration. Most people, including those in the medical profession, have little tolerance for any emotional instability and adopt the belief that anyone with such a problem has simply got to control their emotions and "fit in" with NTs. They fiercely believe that Aspies require fixing.
In spite of all my experiences, I often do tell people I have AS when I realize that I have annoyed them and I try, briefly, to explain I can't control why I am so different and annoying. I ask that they try to understand how I feel and that I am not deliberately trying to annoy them. I withdrew from all my friends (the few I actually had) and told them that I can't always stop my Aspie reactions from surfacing and because of that I choose to remain alone so I won't bother them any longer. This usually makes people somewhat angry and most try to keep the friendship going. However, they continue to react to any Aspie behavior on my part with the rock solid belief that I could stop being an Aspie if I really wanted to. I have given out numerous articles and URLs to these people, asking them to try to learn and understand that my brain is really wired differently from theirs. So far, it hasn't helped much. Still, I am a retired teacher and RN and I place a lot of faith in the eventual education of the public to the point that they accept that autism is no different from other handicaps. Some paralyzed people, some deaf people and some blind people can be made somewhat better with modern medicine and surgery, but like Down Syndrome people, autism can't be removed from the person. In order to accommodate the sensibilities of NTs, we can make the effort to modify some of our behaviors, but we can't be "cured."