A river in Eygpt.

 "So, I can tell you, that you do meet the criteria for ADHD."

Well, fuck.

That wasn't my actual reply, but it might as well have been. 

I wasn't ready for that. 

Let's rewind a bit...

When my therapist asked whether I'd ever been tested for ADHD, I was pretty sure I didn't have it. Even though I didn't really know what it was. My wife agreed. And as a highly experienced teacher, who had inevitably come across a lot of neurodiverse kids, she'd know, right?

Of course, my therapist was extremely professional about it. She was very careful to clarify that she was not making any kind of diagnosis and there was no requirement to further investigate it. I should do whatever made me feel most comfortable. 

There was some initial reticence. I wasn't sure I could take another body blow at that time. For months I'd been sleeping for an average of four hours a night. I was scraping through each day at work, I was in grief and my mental health was in meltdown. 

But, of course, I'm ADHD, so give me a rock and tell me not to look at the shiny thing underneath it and you know what happened next. I had to scratch that itch. So, I did some reading*, just to see whether anything rang true. 

Oh. 

I took another step towards the cliff and took a free online screening test, with the people who eventually did my full assessment (Care ADHD). 

I'd never gotten 83% in anything before. Go me!

Did I want this...this, condition...syndrome...label...reason...excuse?

I didn't know. I'm not entirely sure I do now. 

It dawned on me that diagnosis doesn't determine whether or not I have ADHD. It's a hugely personal choice and one that I'd never presume to push others into. However, by this point I was so worried about losing my job due to my unproductivity, I thought that the status might afford me some protection (I have no idea whether that's true).

So, I signed up. I figured that the crazy waiting times were such that I'd have plenty of time to get my head around whether I really wanted a formal diagnosis and what impact it might have on my life. 

Five weeks later, I hear those words: 

"So, I can tell you, that you do meet the criteria for ADHD."

How the-, what the-, when the-?

I have no idea why it all happened so quickly. I did go full-ADHD and obsessively compare waiting times from the different providers, but I also wonder whether my answers to the questions about suicide ideation at that time might have played a role in bumping me to the front of the queue (with apologies to those of you that I leapfrogged!)

Back to the diagnosis call....I hung up and went for a walk...around my house. I just, sort of, bumbled about, going into different rooms. It was as if I was looking for something...perhaps some headspace. What was I supposed to do now...cheer, cry, revisit every single significant event from my life through the ADHD lens? I remember getting congratulated on my diagnosis by the very small number of people that I was able to tell. Was this a 'congratulations' moment? Are there greetings cards?

And when would I get the call? You know the one:

"So sorry....there's a been a mistake...your records got mixed up with someone else's...it turns out you're just useless."

Everything that led me to this point in my life couldn't possibly be explained by a few forms and a one -hour call, could it?

How could I possibly have ADHD?! I can sit still. I have a stable job and homelife. 

I just couldn't be ADHD. Except, I am.



*By 'some reading', I mean hyperfocus overdrive: devouring books, podcasts, articles etc etc.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chicken or egg?

So, we know ADHD is genetic, right? At least, I think we do. After reading Gabor Mate's seminal work Scattered Minds , I'm not entirely sure what the cause is. But regardless, the widely agreed view - with a few notable exceptions - is that ADHD is with you from birth.  When I went for diagnosis last year, one of the key pieces of evidence they requested was the view of someone who'd known me since I was a child. I refused. I wasn't ready to tell my parents at that stage, and my sister was battling breast cancer, so had more important things to worry about. And there just wasn't anyone else.  So, I told the assessor myself. About the blurting things out in class, rarely ever finishing any pieces of work, about the emotional dysregulation, about every school report that said I should grow a thicker skin. About the stealing from my father, from family friends, the shoplifting. About the copious and compulsive lying. About the time I flushed my mother's engagement...
Read more

I'm sodding Batman

"ADHD is your superpower!" No. It really fucking isn't.  Unless of course, I missed the The Incredible Adventures of   Self-loathing Man , or perhaps my local comic book store never stocked the graphic novel Sieve Head - he forgets EVERYTHING. I don't profess to be any kind of expert on ADHD - or neurodiversity more broadly - but from what I can gather, some studies (or limited scope and sample size) might point to certain areas where some people with ADHD appear to display an aptitude for certain skills around problem solving and creativity, perhaps a few other things. Hardly conclusive, even to a science dolt like me.  Let's not call a spade a carbon-based deposit relocation device. More often than not, ADHD sucks. It's an impairment...a disorder. We all know it. For every area in which it might help, there are half a dozen where it blows. Being half-decent at the guitar is kinda nice, but I'd swap it for not being a binge eater...for not having a ch...
Read more

We're good at problem solving, right?

Last week I told people I have ADHD. And by people, I mean pretty much everyone in my entire freaking life. I was already ‘out’ at work. I found it easier to tell people in my professional network than I did my loved ones (yeah, on that, I feel a blog coming on…). At work, we have Employee Resource Groups – volunteers who come together to champion a particular cause they’re passionate about (Race & Ethnicity, LGBTQ+ and disability etc). In an attempt to channel my energies into something positive, I signed up to our disability ERG. (Wait, I’m ‘disabled’?!? That’s definitely for another blog.) So, I joined a committee, spoke at a panel event, hosted a seminar – I was an advocate. Literally and metaphorically, I wore the T-shirt. It helped me connect with others in the neurodiverse universe, but without intruding into my real life. At home? I’d told my wife, my sister and my brother-in-law, plus a couple of old school friends who weren’t in my everyday life. But for severa...
Read more