When I was first diagnosed with autism I was already into my senior years. I was experiencing more difficulty in some areas and was relieved to finally have an answer and know there was not a brain tumor or something else causing my problems. The problems weren’t new to me. I had similar difficulties as a child and had then seemed to have improved to where I could live a more normal life most of the time. When my diagnosis was being explained to me, I asked the neuropsychologist why I seemed to be having more difficulties in some areas, like executive function, anxiety, and the sensory processing issues I have. She explained to me that as I developed as a child, some parts of my brain that would manage something in a neurotypical brain were not doing the job. So some other parts of my brain that already had their own job to do, took on a second job and did both. Simply put, now that I am getting older, some parts of my brain have quit their second job.
The QEEG helped me understand what she was talking about with some parts of my brain doing extra work. Now here I am at age sixty-nine with the return of many of the issues from my childhood. My neuropsychologist explained it well. One part of my brain will send the job to another part of my brain which says “I can’t do that anymore” and sends it to another part of my brain which may or may not handle it. This slows down my processing speed considerably. Picture it as if you ordered something from amazon and instead of sending it to your current address, it is first sent through a relay of all the addresses you have ever lived at. It may take awhile before the package arrives.
I think all the time, even in my sleep. Once in college an instructor presented my Statics & Strengths class with a problem concerning bridge expansion. Nobody could figure it out including me. My brain would not let go of the problem and several weeks later, I woke up in the night, got a pencil and paper and wrote down the solution. I took it to the instructor the following day and he said it was textbook perfect. I have also had occasions where I got up in the night and wrote down a poem that had formed in my mind during the night while I was asleep. Now I have been thinking day and night on what the prognosis is for my future.
Reasoning that parts of my brain that were working overtime are now cutting back their workload, I think that as I age I will not get any worse than what I experienced as a child. It removes some anxiety about my future just to know that I got through it once. It will be easier this time because I am not being abused and I do have a means to communicate even when I am handicapped in a person to person conversation.
There is not a lot written about aging in autism. I am only speaking from my own experience because my research did not turn up any helpful information. What I have found in my own experience is that I am much more affected by sensory processing issues, like light and noise. It’s not all bad. I had a grandson spending the night recently and I went to get something from the medicine cabinet after the lights were off. He told me I have superpowers. I had not even thought about being able to see in the dark because to me it was not dark. There was enough light for my light sensitive brain to see clearly but to my grandson, it was not enough light for him to see anything.
I can’t express this better than Dylan Thomas did in his poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” from which I am quoting the first stanza.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I have inserted one of my own drawings to explain my application of the stanza. In my own case my vision is not dimming. My flame burns brightly but my candle is melting. I am going to rage against it by using what still works well and hoping to communicate with others to impart some understanding of what has not been well documented. If other aging autistics will do the same, perhaps it will shed some light for younger autistics who want to know what to expect. It may be as different from one autistic to the next as the word spectrum implies.
For now, I am focusing on all the skills and gifts I still have and using them as fully as possible, while my candle still has wax to burn.