A New Adventure, Part Two: The Journey

Read Part One here!

    The thing was, I now had proof that there was something going on in my brain. All my cousins have dyslexia, and they've all struggled with Irish dance as a result of the unique way their brains work. The advantage they have is that there are six or seven of them dancing at the school, and so all the ones in lower classes have a more experienced sibling who can teach them. I didn't have that kind of support; I didn't see them often enough for that at the time.

    At some point along the way, I remembered my sister-in-law's comment about me having Asperger's. One Google search later, and I fell down a rabbit hole researching autism. I don't know how many videos I watched from I'm Autistic--Now What?, Auticate with Chris and Debby, and How to ADHD (I'd been working at Thanksgiving Point for a year at that point, and both my manager and some family members had mentioned that I might have ADHD). I told my mom, and we discovered that what I was learning about autism explained a lot of my childhood--and a lot about my mom. At some point, a lot of the information began to feel familiar, and while I didn't relate to all of it, enough of it felt familiar that I took several online assessments, which unanimously indicated I needed to look into getting professionally assessed. 

    But how? Assessments cost an arm and a leg! It is so expensive to have an autism professional send you some online questionnaires and then spend a few hours observing the way you respond to different challenges. Assessments can cost anywhere from $1200 to well over $2000.

    I set the idea aside for a time and focused on life for a month or two. I was approaching my first semester of college classes on-campus at UVU after two years of taking GEs in dribs and drabs through concurrent enrollment during my junior and senior years of high school. There was an orientation to go to, an ID card to get, a campus to scout out so I'd know where to drive and where to park and how and where to find my classes, and a schedule to work out so I'd know what availability to give my manager at work. I had only driven to my local high school and to my job on my own as well, so I wasn't familiar with the best routes to and from Orem, and at that point I still wasn't confident on the freeway, so there were test drives to do to nail down what route I would take to and from school every day. There wasn't time to think too much about how I would get an autism assessment, though I still filled a lot of time every day watching videos on autism and ADHD.

    The day of UVU New Student Orientation arrived, and my mom and I rolled up to the campus and headed in to grab our free food and swag and get my picture taken for my student ID. We sat down at a table in the busy ballroom to wait. After the initial introduction, my mom and I were separated so we could each go to our own respective orientation tours and info-dumps.

    The tour was a lot of walking, and ironically enough, didn't go anywhere near the places I would actually be going during the school year, which were the education building across the street and the Institute building by the parking garage. Oh, well. It didn't end up being all that hard to figure it out on the first day of school, so it wasn't the end of the world.

    We were on the back leg of the tour, swinging back around toward the Grand Ballroom to meet up with our adults and head off to specific orientation classes, when we passed by the UVU Student Health Services center. The tour guide explained that SHS was the place to go if we ever needed cheap therapy to help us get through school, as a group therapy session there was only ten dollars. She also mentioned, a little off-handedly, that the SHS also provided inexpensive testing options for ADHD, autism, and specific learning disabilities.

    Wait, hold up! What?

    Yeah, it turns out that UVU offers their students the option to get tested for ADHD for a mere $75, and autism testing for the low, low price of $400--a far cry different from the standard $1200-$2000 range. When I got back to my mom, I told her what I'd found, and it turned out that we had somehow gotten a flyer with all the necessary information on it along our respective travels.

    When we got home, I immediately looked up the testing services. I wasn't allowed to get on the waitlist until school started, and then the waitlist was a year long--hardly a surprise when the testing is offered for such a low cost.

    I waited impatiently for the first day of school, and when I got home I jumped online and went through the process to add my name to the waitlist for both the ADHD assessment and the autism assessment.

    And then I waited.

    And waited.

    And waited.

    Fall Semester went by, and I met an awesome guy who became my boyfriend.

    Christmas Break hit, and the awesome guy proposed. We started planning the wedding right away, and as we rolled into Spring Semester, I was more stressed out than I can ever remember being at any other time in my life. There were conflicts and misunderstandings over the wedding planning, and I was taking 16 credit hours of classes. I had to quit my job at the end of December in order to feel at all confident going into it all.

    Spring Semester crept by, and the ADHD assessment rolled in--only for the assessor to determine that no, he would not take my money, there was very clearly something more going on in my brain, so he recommended that I focus on the autism assessment.

    Spring Semester ended, and despite the lack of school, I was still more stressed out than I'd ever been before. Over the next couple weeks, I began to realize that there were aspects of my relationship with the guy I'd met that were causing problems, so I tried to talk with him about it, and he wouldn't listen until I sent a text with a picture of a letter saying I was breaking up with him. He fought it at first. The next day, he accepted it and admitted that the relationship hadn't been right for him either. We both dodged a bullet that day.

    The difference was that I was pretty much over the relationship within a week, while I suspect he may still be struggling to this day.

    I moved from relationship to job hunt, and finally the email came saying that I was at the top of the waitlist for the autism assessment. I scheduled the initial interview and filled out my paperwork.

    From the initial interview, we scheduled a day when I would go in for five hours or so and do all the remaining testing--a day when I would have been on a honeymoon had everything gone to plan with the ex-fiance. I also got a job at an autism center and got to work with a bunch of amazing kids for a week before the big testing day.

    The big testing day went super smoothly, and my assessor was incredibly friendly and laughed with me about my brain tricking the tests, because for him it was pretty obvious that there was ADHD and autism going on in there--and where the autism side would be challenged, the ADHD tended to take over, and vice versa. We scheduled a tentative day to go over the results, and I went back to my life.

    Two weeks later, my new job let me go. I wasn't the right fit. It was such a process-driven job, and I was struggling to pick up the processes as quickly as they needed me to; they didn't have the resources to train me the way I needed to be trained.

    It felt like getting broken up with, and what was worse, it was the same problem I'd had with karate and Irish dance. Once again, no one had the time to teach me the way I needed to be taught, and this time I didn't leave out of frustration--I was let go. The most frustrating part about it all was that if the center had been a bit clearer and a bit more up front during the interview of what they needed from me, I would have been able to tell them before they even hired me that I wasn't the right fit. I already knew I was bad at learning new processes, and the autism assessment in process was evidence enough that I didn't have the adaptability they needed from me.

    At the same time, I hold no hard feelings toward that center--they're great people who are trying to do good for the kids in their care, and that job came at the time where three weeks of work and the extra $1000 I earned for that work was exactly what I needed, because after six months of having no job and having to work out of my savings to pay for gas and a couple appointments at the dentist for my routine checkup and to get a filling a couple days later, I was running low on funds and wasn't sure I'd have enough to pay for textbooks after paying for the autism assessment. That job, short-lived though it was, was an answer to prayer that came at the perfect time to get me through. And they were right--it wasn't the right fit.

    A week after losing my job, I met with my assessor again and received the results of my assessment. At long last, after so much time spent researching and waiting, I knew better what was going on in my brain, and could move forward using that knowledge to try and work with my brain to succeed, rather than feeling like I was running up against the same wall again and again and again.

Read Part Three here!