Aspergers assessment — too rich for my blood, actually

How I’m feeling, right about now

So, my Aspergian keen attention to detail, coupled with a completely lack of far-reaching oversight has stumped me, again. If I’d been looking at the big picture, I would have realized that my plans to get an Aspergers assessment were ill-advised. I simply don’t have the time and money for it.

I had an appointment lined for an Asperger’s assessment at the end of September. The cost was about $1,300 (give or take), and it will last for 5 hours, with a lunch break in between. My partner will need to be there, to corroborate my data, and at the end, I’d have an official diagnosis that’s valid and recognized — except for government support (which I don’t need, yet). If I plan to apply for government assistance, I need a medical or psychiatric or psychologist’s diagnosis.

I thought it was going to be fine, even though the person doing the assessment isn’t in my insurance network – and even if they were, I wouldn’t want insurance involved, because it can work against me on down the line and mark me with a “disorder”. Ah, the joys of “managed” healthcare.

But when I stepped back and looked at my finances, shelling out $1,300 for an assessment (while better than the $3,500 I’d have to pay for a medical/psychiatric one), is still too rich for my blood. I have been living paycheck-to-paycheck for years, now, given that I’m the sole provider for my household, and we had a bunch of medical bills and issues about 10 years ago that completely wiped out my retirement fund.

My retirement fund / safety net right now is about $3,300 — that’s taken me a full year to build up to. There’s other money in the bank, but we have a number of house repairs to do, and frankly, having no financial safety net at all (including no retirement savings) is something I need to remedy.

Do I slash my household’s safety net by nearly half, when I’m not even going to get anything from it other than possibly peace of mind and a way to cut to the chase in my discussions with mental health providers? Do I potentially jeopardize our health and safety and what tenuous security we have, just to have someone else in an official position tell me something I’ve been 98.72% sure of, since 1998?

Plus, do I tie up both my partner’s and my own full day — taking a day off work to use up a precious vacation day, and also disrupting my partner’s schedule and putting her through what would probably be a pretty demanding 5 hours of intense scrutiny? She’s going to be in physical therapy for mobility issues at that time, and that’s going to be consuming vast amounts of her resources — physical, mental, emotional.

This is the kind of thing you do if you’ve got time and money to spare, as well as a partner who’s comfortable talking about your “issues” — which she really isn’t. I mask and camouflage and blend at home almost as much as I do out in the NT world. I think it would frankly be a little too much for both of us, and it could derail us for days, if not weeks, as a result.

So, do I do this? Does the benefit justify the cost?

Nah. When I look at it from the high-level view and consider all the different factors, I can’t see the point. In the grand scheme of things, an official diagnosis will only help me if I need accommodations, and I don’t — won’t — need them for the foreseeable future.

Never mind all that. It’s deeply disappointing, and I did shed a few bitter tears last night. But I just can’t justify draining my hard-earned safety net (such as it is) for something that’s more along the lines of a curiosity-satisfier than something I require for my survival.

Now back to my regularly scheduled programming…