Dear Med Students,
I am an autistic adult. In light of several terrible doctor's appointments in a row, it's become clear that they teach you all absolutely nothing about autism. Here are some things you need to know.
I am not a child. Do not use your baby voice on an adult, regardless of whether or not they have a developmental disability.
I know when someone's dismissing me. We pick up on nonanswers like "we'll cross that bridge when we get there" very easily, because we depend on concrete answers for peace of mind.
I know what my own sexual orientation is.
I understand more than I can express to you. There is a substantial gap between what I am capable of understanding and what I can get back out of my mouth in a way that makes sense to neurotypical people.
Pain scales mean nothing to me. It's like asking me to count backwards in Sumerian. You are asking me to apply an arbitrary scale to an abstract feeling that I may experience atypically because of my whacked-out sensory system. Ask me questions about what the pain prevents me from doing instead.
My sensory system is different than yours. I cannot tell what is "normal" bodily sensation and what is not. My body interprets many inputs, like loud noises, as pain. On the other hand, I may have almost no sense of where my body is in space at a given moment. If you had to differentiate all that from a symptom of another medical condition, you'd be confused and inarticulate too.
