Interesting that you're also a linguist, having basically similar problems as I.

I never followed any course in historical linguistics, though (maybe one). We had a strict separation between historical and formal/structural/generative linguistics.

However, it does help me remember words (immensely) by putting them into an historical, etymological, context.

It was dyslexia that lead me to do linguistics: I wanted to find some regularity, some context, in all this arbitrary (contentious, in my book, including the lexicon) mess we call language, so I could remember it. It was also dyslexia/"dysreductia" which made me develop theories of how language in the (very) broad sense, arbitrary (largely, yet with some regularity/structure of course) sequences, works together with emotion (I was manic during that time, but I always like to explore uncharted territory).

So psycholinguistics was the logical next step. From there I broadened by horizons to include the study of psychotic disorders, which I believe to be dyslexia/dysreductia severely gone wrong.

Emotions and (sequential) forms. Always look at the outliers/exceptions in some essential ways to study those ways. So I included the autism spectrum disorders which lie very much at the opposite end of a continuum (with regard to emotion and appraisal in perception) which transcends all forms/types of perception, as I see it.

Now I am doing research in everything, given there is not much more than perception, really. With an emphasis on the relations between emotion and form, further on psychotic disorders and further still (formal) thought disorders and dyslexia (in the broad sense: "dysreductia").

I also had problems with b's and d's and other letters, but not anymore. I could write with both hands, but at school they thought (at the time) that this was problematic and that I should choose one or the other. I did and I can't write with my left hand now. Pretty much everything else I can do equally well with both hands, but I prefer to use my left hand (except for writing).

Reading upside down is not at all an issue. I used to read the newspaper my father was reading from the opposite side of the table. He, always the charmer, would say: "Didn't you have dyslexia?" (he never believed I did and gradually begins to accept I am "crazy" and need help, in his words). While it is because, not despite, dyslexia that I can read upside down with ease. Positioning just being rather inessential. It also explains the dysreductic problem with b's and d's. Same with handedness: who cares!?