I'm glad you got it carved-in-stone! I hate to hear how much it cost...everyone I know who got diagnosed as an adult said it cost them around $5,000 to get done. And I'm broke so I run with a tentative...
In my intro, I stated my discovery was a very strange, Twilight-Zone-ish occurrence: on December 14, 2018, I was flying from Boise to St. Louis and I ended up in Minneapolis-St. Paul for a 5-hour layover. Arrived in the terminal in my wheelchair, got to the next gate, sat...
...but not for long: within minutes, an older, professional-looking male sat a couple seats over in the near-empty terminal with some college-age-looking young adults in tow, who all sat around on the floor and began a discussion. After several minutes, the older guy initiated contact with some small talk; at first I tried to defer it, be brief...but he had this way of drawing me out. And since I was bored, I decided to talk with him. After some talk, he noted that I was uneasy and asked if everything was okay so I told him I'm not very social. He said he'd seen some interesting qualities and asked if we could talk more...why not? So we talked more...
After some talk, he asked if I was depressed or something...and introduced his credentials as a professor of psychiatry. Just my luck, I thought...but decided to keep on. I told him I have transient depression, including seasonal, plus anxiety/panic disorder. As I talked, it seemed he was analyzing me and I grew a bit leery; he sensed it and assured me everything was okay. Being civil, it continued: he asked if I'd been diagnosed with something else and I replied Bipolar I in 1994. Some thought, more talk...oddly enough, the young troupe which was with him started closing in, listening in. He introduced them as students; they were all leaving for Christmas vacation with their families. He asked if I'd taken any kind of IQ, SAT or other tests; I told him all I'd taken was ASVAB: one category score was 89...the rest were in the 97-, 98- and 99-percentile ranks. This really got his attention and he asked more about it: I told him that Army, Navy and Air Force all showed up at my door to court me into recruiting and that I consulted my recruiter about why this was going on and he told me my ASVAB scores were among the highest in Washington state history...and that I was stunned. The commander of the unit which did my ASVAB projected my IQ at 150. The professor was a bit stunned, too.
He then asked other stuff: hobbies, relationships, school years, work/family/financial issues, others. I answered. The next question was one which struck my awareness: "Is there a history of autism in your family?" Yes: a nephew, a second cousin, other relatives...and I have two granddaughters with autism (one slight, the other marked impairment). And then more Q&A...
Not long before my next flight was approaching, he told me he believed I was misdiagnosed as Bipolar; instead, the traits he analyzed passively as we talked, plus the other things I told him he strongly believed I had high-functioning autism; the group largely agreed.
What got me was that at first, I thought it was a gag or something but he gave me his card as his and the group's flight was ready to board...and off they went. Within minutes, my flight was called as well. I left the card there and boarded the plane for St. Louis.
All during the visit and the trip back, I thought about it with no real bother, which continued through the Holiday season. It was the first week of January, after the hubbub died down, that it hit full-force. It made sense...and I went online and scoured the internet for clues, information. It just made perfect sense. Everything lined up.
What began after that was an 8-month odyssey of skullfoofery: my past came back in very vivid 3-D, memories would come in tidal surges, like hallucinations. I became very withdrawn, very dour, unapproachable. The more I tried to dodge it, the harder it hit. For years, it felt there was a Shadow-Person in my life, looking at me, into me, from my youngest years to after the diagnosis...always eluding me, staying out of plain view.
Then, one day...it ended. Just like that. Over. Done. And the Shadow-Person revealed itself: autism. It took to my side and has been there ever since, no longer a shadow. We're companions now, wherever we go. But I suspected there was more to it...and after some time ago, I found I was right. And it took a recent Star Trek episode to find out...
The episode was "The Enemy Within", where during a transporter incident Captain Kirk is split into his two halves...two Kirks. Very much looking alike, ever so different in nature. And the two of them observing, struggling cat-and-mouse against one another until the crew fixes the matter after retransporting both Kirks back into one.
It finally occurred to me and I learned a little more: my Companion, the former Shadow-Person, is more than just autism...it's me with autism. I was my own Shadow-Person, curiously, somberly trying to learn about myself from the outside looking in, trying to understand with every new observation, every new day. There, but apart, day after day, into the tens of thousands of days, darting out of my own view lest I be found out.
And so I accepted it. Nothing else fits. The mystery is over. Getting the official nod seems very pricey...and I'm poor, living on Social Security Disability. $5,000, the price others told me their diagnoses cost, is out of my reach. So...I run with what I got.
And add two diagnoses from the '90s into the mix: an abnormal EEG centered in the frontocentral region...and paroxysmal dyskinesia, which I thought were nonepileptic seizures, which manifests itself as ascending paralysis episodes lasting 15-30 minutes. I've had 12 episodes.
In summary, ya just gotta muddle through it, whether you have any form of support or not. And I had none whatsoever. So I held on tight for the ride and managed to get through it and onto a clearer path. So...just gotta live it out now, with one less mystery on my mind. It was a mix of relief and turmoil.