I was taking a walk in the park a couple months ago with my joint-first-favourite-person-in-the-whole-world (clue – I’m a mother of two), when they said “You know you have ADHD, right?”
Well, no I didn’t as it happens, the thought had never crossed my mind. I knew I was a little odd, a little left of centre, with unique being the word most often used to describe me by friends, strangers and bosses alike, but no, I didn’t know I had ADHD.
I think I paused a moment whilst my brain took on this new piece of information, then uttered something along the lines of “Yeah, probably”, before changing the subject, fearing the tsunami of emotion this revelation was about to release, knowing this was most likely best kept for the safety of my own four walls.
I’m from a generation where ADHD meant the naughty kid in class. Or rather, the naughty boy in class, because girls definitely didn’t have ADHD back in the 70’s and 80’s. The boys in question went through several cycles of being kicked out of class, suspended, then reinstated before finally being expelled and never seen again. The rest of us would snigger at the entertainment whilst it lasted, but ultimately forgot about them. I do remember some “I wonder what happened to…?” conversations along the way, as school friends reminisced, but nobody ever knew the answer.
When I got home from the park that day, I completed a few online Do I Have ADHD quizzes, which, unsurprisingly, delivered a Highly Likely result. And so began a bordering-on-obsessive quest for knowledge on the subject. I watched YouTube videos, read blogs, bought books and joined webinars, but all this served to produce was an overwhelm on a level I had not experienced for years.
My head was full and I could not make sense of, nor silence, the million thoughts chaotically banging around in there. I had a week’s leave booked, and hoped the breathing space would help. It didn’t. I returned to work, but instead of feeling refreshed, I found I was unable to function, my brain paralysed by the overwhelm. And so, for the first time since 2009, I took a week off sick. It didn’t help.
That was when I made the decision to seek diagnosis.
At one point or another, since that day in the park, I’ve said to both my joint-first-favourite-people-in-the-whole-world that I didn’t see the benefit in diagnosis at my age. However, I now realise it is more important than ever, that just because I have unwittingly developed many coping strategies over the years, it doesn’t mean life has to continue being so difficult.
I don’t have the time or patience to join an NHS waiting list, which currently average three years for diagnosis – a shocking statistic, therefore I have decided to go private. There will be a few less trips and treats over the coming months, but I feel it is the right thing to do.
For me.
And so I begin my unexpected journey, and along with it, this blog, which I hope will help bring order to the newly created chaos my brain finds itself coping with.
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