Quote:
Originally Posted by njbchbum
to all who have shared the experiences of autism - i salute you and share in your hopes and desires. we are all one big family!
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Thanks. My parents said I was diagnosed as autistic when I was very young. My mother had some kind of flu when I was still in her womb. I do believe that there are bad diagnoses however. I remember being in a camp for the mentally retarded. They did not distinguish the mentally retarded from the autistic back around 1966 of 1967 when this happened in the Milwaukee area. I struggled with co-ordination and speech problems however. A wonderful teacher in Reno, Nevada in High School at Earl Wooster HS, Mrs. Barbara Mitchell bolstered my self-confidence which had always been lacking. She challenged me to read books like
Anna Karenina and
Crime and Punishment. Fortunately, I had other teachers at other stages who helped me get a law degree, a MA in Librarianship from the University of Denver, and 2 BAs from the University of Nevada, Reno. I also used these 4 degrees and the connections they gave me to fight for better access for victims/survivors of violent crimes mainly because of the fateful 1976 murder of Mrs. Mitchell's daughter on my birthday of 2-24 near the University of Nevada, Reno campus where she was a nursing student. I do believe that my work for survivors of crimes-- volunteer as it was-- did have a big impact especially because of my role of cataloger of all the WESTLAW files in their database as they existed around 1990 for a national project.
Still do not see autistic as the right diagnosis but how others see you is
ALMOST as important as how you see yourself. I have had to fight with the autistic label quite often as a preteen and teen. I did as I said have speech problems which still crop up from time to time. Do not think I would have got through Law School at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis without the help and support of three Student Body Presidents who befriended me while I was there as well as the good friends I made in Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners.