Update

First of all which is untypical for me, I need to thank all of you who have given me practical support through my current crisis

I feel the need to keep you all informed as to where I am at.

I am still bearing an enormous amount of stress which is fighting against my mind to shut down my body. Still waiting to see the shrink and in the meantime have required a referral back to the neurologist as certain symptoms that were not apparent on the last tests have worsened in the meantime. The fight with my GP's the length of time I have had to wait for appointments and then the length of time I have to wait for the hospital does not help. I am due to see the shrink in April sometime (date unknown) and the neurologist in May, in the meantime I will be having an operation at some unspecified time in April complicating matters.

Through all of that I owe to everybody to complete my current terms work at Uni, which I am getting on with now, and complete next terms to graduate at the end of this year.

I have to accept now, financially there is no next year to complete an MeD it cannot be done and I have to gracefully accept that for the time being I will leave with a PGCertspED

I have great hopes of going on to a PhD and right now in the midst of all my stresses I am discussing this with all and sundry even having some of my ideas critically challenged before I start.

My worry is that I might still fall foul of the no first degree tick box formality, which is why I need to get the support first so that whoever looks at this points out that I can be trusted to have the capability.

I have also for my sins started an adult teaching course, which is about as NT as you can get, and is stressing me with group work and work in pairs. It is like jumping through a hoop of fire for me, that it seems I have to go through these kinds of gauntlets to get the formal qualifications that then allow me do and design things in an autistic friendly way or to teach others why what I have been taught is not universal.

I hope I do not collapse before I get to my objectives and that in September I have a clearer road ahead of me than the one I see now tangled with briars.

I need to be superhuman to overcome the anxiety with no damage to me, but I am not. My voice is hoarse from yelling at the phone this morning trying to get through to the hospital which requires you to do things in a most autistic unfriendly way.

You see I have a mission, I have always had a mission which drives me. I believe I can, given the right tools, the right accesses take on the things that researchers mostly refuse because they are not easy, and don't get your name in academic lights in the same way that the more orthodox but essentially empty cognitive or genetic research gets you because it is still "sexy"

I want my research to do something for Autism, to alter the way it is thought about in the professions who have to deal with it.

Above as an autistic it is my duty to do that, to show that we are central to this whole process. The processes of science and medicine which created us have turned us into the Frankenstein Monster who wants a piece of the action.

I just hope I can survive it all and don't end up fleeing from the peasants to end my life on a lonely iceberg.