ADHD and Me

 My ADHD diagnosis two years ago really didn't come as any surprise to anyone. I was just glad it wasn't something else. However, I wasn't prepared for the emotional and mental toll processing the diagnosis would take. In fact, I'm still processing sometimes. Which is why I'm writing this blog. I don't care if no one ever reads this. But something about typing my thoughts out helps to put them in order in a way I can't do if they're just floating around in my head. And I can type so much faster than I can write that it's way better for me to type it out.

Thirty years ago when I was in elementary school ADHD was for hyper little boys (and the rare hyper little girls) who bounced around the classrooms, couldn't sit still, and interrupted without raising their hands. Quiet little girls like me who got good grades certainly didn't fit the criteria. But looking back I feel like there should have been a neon sign above my head flashing ADHDer! 

I was a smart kid. I was reading at age three, and reading well by age 4. Young enough that I don't remember learning to read. It's as if I've just always known how. The first book I remember reading was The Secret Garden. Not an abbreviated kids' version. The whole thing. One of my mom's favorite stories to tell about how I could read at such a young age went like this: She tried to tell my kindergarten teacher that I knew how to read, but I was shy. I didn't want to be singled out as different, so when I realized other kids my age couldn't read I stopped letting people know I could do it. Of course the teachers just thought my mom was bragging about her extra smart kid, just like all parents do. Like the parents who swear their kid said a word at 2 months old. They said a sound that was like a word "da-da" but they didn't mean anything by it. They don't yet know that "da-da" is associated with that person in their house. Anyway... A few weeks into school my mom was going through my backpack and found a paper on which everything I had done was marked wrong. She thought that was especially odd since the directions were at the bottom of the page and I had done everything it said. So she brought the paper in to the teacher and asked why she had marked it wrong when my answers were correct. Turns out the teacher had ignored the instructions on the paper and asked the kids to do something else with it. I don't know exactly what the instructions were, but something like, the directions said color everything that starts with P, but the teacher said to circle everything that starts with a T. The teacher made up her own instructions to go along with whatever lesson she had been teaching, and never considered that one of her kindergarteners would read the instructions and do that assignment instead. Like I said; I was a smart kid. I could read well. But paying attention... not exactly my strong suit. 

The signs were all there and continued as I got older but no one knew what symptoms to look for back then. I was a doodler. I couldn't keep my room or my car clean to save my life. I lost things on a regular basis. I was constantly forgetting important things. I locked my keys in my car, or left my headlights on and killed the battery more times than I can count. As time went on I worked out some systems to help me get through the day. When cars starting having noisy alerts that let you know when your lights were on or your keys were still in the ignition it was a game changer for me. And then cars with automatic daytime running lights? Genius! If I have something important at work that I don't want to forget to bring home I put my keys with it. I never leave the building without checking for my keys (because I know there's a fair chance they won't be where I thought I left them). Even if the items are foods that belong in the fridge or freezer, my keys go right into the fridge or freezer with them. I don't forget to bring things home that way. I still had my quirks of course. And I thought that's exactly what they were, just quirks. 

I remember having a conversation with my husband, and then my cousin about a comedian who joked about "thinking about nothing." He said "Ladies, when you ask a man what he's thinking about and he says 'nothing', he's thinking about nothing! He ain't lying." And I said "Well that's just ridiculous. You can't think about nothing!" but my husband said it was indeed possible. And I said "I can't even imagine it! I can't think of less than 4 things at a time! And there's always a song playing in the background." It might be a song I recently heard on the radio, on a commercial, or a song that popped in my mind after something somebody said had the same words as a song I know, or just a song that came from nowhere. My cousin said that sounded exhausting to her. Yup, it's exhausting to me too.

Then in 2015 I began what would turn out to be the hardest five year span of my life, which changed everything. I'll get deeper into that later but for now I'll say that sometime in 2019 I had a couple episodes of what I now know to be called extreme hyper-focus. At the time I feared it was something like bi-polar showing up in adulthood. The first episode consisted of me spending three days in a row fixated on one topic. I researched the topic from top to bottom and created a business plan and a layout for my proposed future business that wouldn't be even remotely possible for more than a few years. I can't quite remember what the second one was. But it was enough for me to be concerned and make a doctor's appointment. I'd also been having more trouble than ever with executive functioning and my husband was ready to go crazy. 

My initial appointment was with my PCP but she quickly referred me to the Psych NP in the office. On my first appointment with the Psych NP she said "Let me guess... you're the kind of person who can drink a cup of coffee in the afternoon and have no trouble sleeping that night." I replied "I can drink coffee at 8pm and go straight to bed with no problems." Then she said "I don't like to diagnose on the first visit, but fill out these papers and at our next visit we'll talk about ADHD." After my official diagnosis she asked if I wanted to try medication or something else and I said that I had tried so many things to organize myself even without a diagnosis that I thought the only thing left to try was meds. So she started me out on a low dose of Vyvanse. The second day on the medication my mind was empty. I could focus on whatever I wanted. There were no racing thoughts. There wasn't even any music. Honestly it felt creepy to me. I get that same feeling in a room that is exceptionally clean and tidy when it's dark. It's a little eerie. Unfortunately the effects only lasted a little while on the low dose, and I had to increase the dose to a more therapeutic level, which is very common the first few months on this medication. But by the time we got to a therapeutic dose it was causing my heart to race too fast and I ended up stopping it. One of the docs had put me back on Wellbutrin a while back and so we increased the dose for that which seems to be helping quite a bit for now. It's not perfect. Probably won't ever be. But I at least feel a little more like a functional human most days. I'm starting to climb out of the cave I've been in for a long time now. I just hope it's not too late to save my relationships.