News desk: The symptoms first appeared during childhood. It’s just that no one recognised them. There isn’t the medical equivalent of a quick lateral flow test for the condition either. It requires expert assessment to combine behavioural puzzles \u2013 using pieces that appear to come from separate jigsaws \u2013 to create an unexpectedly new picture.<\/p>\n
This explains why I wasn’t diagnosed with a life-long developmental disability until the age of 60. Embarrassingly, a former BBC science correspondent missed her own breaking news.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, it is a lot to process. It means, in commonly used language, I am “on the spectrum”. Or neurodiverse. A “different” thinker.<\/p>\n
I am that woman with no volume control who probably interrupted your conversation because a thought exploded from her head and immediately out of her mouth. The woman who is so brutally honest you might recall her as rude. The one who got overly excited about space stamps or wildflowers and kept going on about women’s hidden histories, Wally Funk and the Mercury 13. The one who wouldn’t shut up or let it lie.<\/p>\n
One doctor said I was the oldest diagnosis he’d ever come across. But while many adults report feeling empowered by a late autism diagnosis, I am not one of them. At least not yet. My initial response was a mixture of shock and shame.<\/p>\n
I felt broken.<\/p>\n
Since the diagnosis I’ve been slowly reframing six decades of relationships, actions and behaviour through this new and alternative lens. In the same way a prism disperses light into a rainbow, my understanding of how and why I behave the way I do is expanding. It is both revelational and unnerving. <\/p>\n
As a science journalist, naturally I’ve done my research and I’ve found out I’m far from alone. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1% of the world’s population is on the autism spectrum.<\/p>\n
So, I am one among 74 million.<\/p>\n
Most people get their diagnosis as children. Most of those children will be boys. The male to female autism ratio, according to the UK’s National Autistic Society (NAS), is around 3:1, but the number of women being diagnosed with autism is increasing.<\/p>\n
Autism experts realised only relatively recently that some girls “present” differently to boys and this may have caused an under-diagnosis in the past. Girls were assessed based on the behavioural observations of the opposite sex. They wouldn’t always have ticked the “right” boxes.<\/p>\n
As the word spectrum suggests, autism covers a range of conditions. The World Health Organization defines it as “characterised by some degree of difficulty with social interaction and communication” as well as different forms of behaviours, “such as difficulty with transition from one activity to another, a focus on details and unusual reactions to sensations”.<\/p>\n
Ah, yes, sensations\u2026<\/p>\n
Most of my time outdoors is spent wearing sunglasses as my eyes are sensitive to bright light. Then there’s my intense dislike of certain textures and sounds. I once refused to go to school because pupils ate too loudly and, for a long period of time when young, would only eat tomato soup and chocolate pudding. In my 20s, I left my first-ever Japanese meal extremely hungry because I had gagged at the sight of sashimi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
News desk: The symptoms first appeared during childhood. It’s just that no one recognised them. There isn’t the medical equivalent of a quick lateral flow test for the condition either. It requires expert assessment to combine behavioural puzzles – using pieces that appear to come from separate jigsaws – to create an unexpectedly new picture. This explains why I wasn’t diagnosed with a life-long developmental disability until the age of 60. Embarrassingly, a former BBC science correspondent missed her own breaking news. Not surprisingly, it is a lot to process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31045,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[43,30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31044"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31046,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31044\/revisions\/31046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}