Digsite

Since Friday of last week, I have been reading, listening to and watching every single thing on ADHD I can lay my hands on.  I’ve had a burning need to know EVERYTHING. I’m just not completely convinced that I have this disorder.  If I do have ADHD tho, then how could I have not known?!  Why would no other doctor pick up on it?!   On Friday, I set out to find the answers to two main questions:

- Do my current behaviours and problems really mesh up with this diagnosis?
- Have I had these problems long enough to qualify for this diagnosis?

Although I don’t fully have faith in them, I completed a handful of online Adult ADHD screening tests and each time I scored very high.

Ie,
I scored 90 @ http://psychcentral.com/addquiz.htm
I scored 26 @ http://psychcentral.com/quizzes/adultaddquiz.htm

The questions are either the same or similar on other sites so there’s little point in doing more. Not surprisingly, these questions are similar to the ones on my drug doctor’s questionnaires.

Making Sense of the Acronyms:

The newest, official term for the disorder is AD/HD.

AD/HD: “Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder”. (no duh)
“AD/HD is a diagnosis applied to children and adults who consistently display certain characteristic behaviors over a period of time. The most common core features include:

* distractibility
* impulsivity
* hyperactivity

In order to meet diagnostic criteria, these behaviors must be excessive, long-term, and pervasive.” (stolen from add.org)

In children, the behaviors must be present for 6 or more months. In adults, the behaviors must have been present since childhood.

The following is only my theory… but  I think that AD/HD has been divided with a forward slash to illustrate that the disorder has two main subtypes: Attention Deficit, and Hyperactivity.  The third subtype, called ‘Combined’, combines the symptoms for the first two subtypes.    I’m pretty sure I heard this on a conference vid, but I can’t find it now to check so I won’t say this is definitive reason for the ‘/’.

ADHD: Same as above. This is the term most frequently found in literature today. I think I’ll stick with this one.

ADD: Usually it means the same as above. Some people may use this term to imply a form ADHD that doesn’t have ‘H’yperactivity associated with it. Technically, the correct term to label a kind of adhd like that would be ADHD-I. I stands for the “Inattentive”, a subtype ADHD. People with this subtype of ADHD don’t exhibit hyperactivity.

The Three Subtypes of ADHD:

ADHD- Inattentive type

• Fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes.
• Has difficulty sustaining attention.
• Does not appear to listen.
• Struggles to follow through on instructions.
• Has difficulty with organization.
• Avoids or dislikes tasks requiring sustained mental effort.
• Loses things.
• Is easily distracted.
• Is forgetful in daily activities.

ADHD- Hyperactive/Impulsive type

• Fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in chair.
• Has difficulty remaining seated.
• Runs about or climbs excessively.
• Difficulty engaging in activities quietly.
• Acts as if driven by a motor.
• Talks excessively.
• Blurts out answers before questions have been completed.
• Difficulty waiting or taking turns.
• Interrupts or intrudes upon others.

ADHD- Combined type

• Individual meets both sets of inattention and hyperactive/impulsive criteria.

(the above subtype bullets plagiarized from help4adhd.org)

There is yet fourth, but unofficial, subtype below the Inattentive subtype called SCT or Sluggish Cognitive Type. The American Psychiatric Association may include it in their next their next publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2012, making it an official subtype of ADHD-I. Some researchers argue that SCT should be made a separate disorder altogether because the criteria for it is completely the opposite from classic ADHD. These kids/adults will lack the necessary energy to do anything, they are shy, introverted, have little drive or motivation, move slowly both mentally and physically, process information more slowly, daydream a lot and to stare off into space.  To me this sounds like ADHD-I with comorbid Depression.  (Can you tell I’ve read a lot of this shit lately?  Maybe too much?!)

And that was me for a lot of my childhood.  Daydreamer, tuned out of my present surrounding completely, slow, etc.  But I remember being depressed as well.  Crying for no reason on the way to school, feeling unimportant, etc. The issue with me, tho, is that I also remember times when I was very disruptive, overly talkative, and said things to other kids that were downright offensive. I did a handful of stupid things out of impulse.  I’ll be more verbose about those tomorrow

So how convinced am I that I have ADHD now? Um… god… I just can’t get passed the thinking that this is a childhood disorder.  That’s not true and logically I know better, but I can’t help thinking that way. I’ll keep digging and see what I come up with.

I’ll be blogging a lot more in the next few days because I’m trying to process some new information which, if I don’t write it out, will continue to sit in my head like a giant black obelisk.   My mind is already occupied by a large tangle of dust and debris, so it goes without saying there is little room left for this giant black obelisk.

So where do I begin….

My new ‘drug doctor’ (aka psycho-pharmacologist) and I sat down to talk about a month ago for the first time.  She did the usual boring stuff… read my old chart, asked me a million questions, chatted with me for 2 hours, and then she said I’m still depressed and that there’s a chance I could have either bipolar disorder or ADD and she asked if I have a family history with either.  I answered as best I could.  The bipolar disorder didn’t make much sense to me because I know what the criteria are for that and I know I don’t match those.  The ADD was a shock, but possible, I thought.  But I challenged it anyway.  She then had me fill out a bunch of questionaires.  She looked them over while saying “Oh.. ” and “Hmmm..”.  Made me quite nervous for some reason.   They were questionaires for bipolar and ADD.  Which would I be ‘lucky’ enough to draw, right?   She then said it might be ADD, renewed my prescription for the same stuff I had been taking for depression, tells me to stop forgetting weekend doses.  That concluded the appointment and I left.

All I could think on the drive home was  “ADD, wow… this is what my kid has, not me.  Me?   Just ridiculous.  It would explain a few things… but ADD?”

A month passes and I don’t give it much more thought.  So I go back last week Friday for my next are-you-psycho-yet appointment.  I tell her I’ve been consistent with the meds this month but nothing has changed except for the absence of my usual weekend headaches.  Makes sense, no weekend withdrawal from lack of meds.  But I still can’t concentrate on anything, my memory is still shit, I’m lucky I remember my way to work every morning (I didn’t really say this but I’m adding this one here for flare), and my sleep pattern is still a shambles.  Then she blurts out “you know you have ADD, right?”   Huh?  I said she hadn’t told me definitively.  ‘Might’ was suddenly being replaced with a ‘Definitely’ and I wasn’t expecting it.  “Yes, you have ADD”, she repeated.  I said ok, highly skeptical of course.  Maybe she’s another quack.

She replaced my anti-depressants with a different type which she said should help with ADD as well, and asked me to come back in two weeks.  She never did explain WHY she thought I had ADD, I was too dazed to ask.  I’ll be asking that when I see her again in 10 days.  I need a personalized professional explanation from her.  But I can’t wait 14 days to find out what this means, the obelisk has already formed.  Between it and the meds change turning in my brain to mush while it adapted, even my dysfunction was becoming dysfunctional.

Ok so obelisk transformed into action last weekend, I’ve latched on to a new interest of the month and that’s to learn as much as I possibly can about ADD or ADHD or AD/HD.  And I know what the difference between those acronyms is now…  Obelisk will explain later.  I never did this much research when Jada was diagnosed because I think we just wanted to ignore it (at least I did) and see if she would outgrow it.  She won’t be put on meds anyway, no matter how much the doctors would like to, so what’s the point in researching it, I thought?  Structure, consistency, stay on top of her academics, positive reinforcement, give the teachers the runaround,  then hunker down and wait.  That had been my plan.

Even if I find that I don’t have ADD, I’ll come away with a better understanding that will benefit my daughter. I have already learned that the odds she will ‘outgrow’ it are very low.  Once you have it, you always have it.  If she does outgrow it, it possibly won’t be until her 30′s.  People with ADHD will either  learn to cope with it and succeed in spite of it, or they won’t.   If you can learn how to succeed, then it’s no longer considered a disorder, but a trait.

People with ADHD are at higher risk for car accidents, incarcerations, early pregnancies, dropping out of school, ending up in dead end jobs, substance abuse, becoming disconnected from family, developing depression.   So what I’ve learned already is that my original plan for dealing with Jada’s ADHD is wrong.   There is more we can do than just structure, positive reinforcement, etc, etc…   None of those things help with the ADHD itself.    There are medication-free options to explore but none of them include “hunkering down”.

And I say finally because I ended up upgrading this blog to 2.9.1 and then upgrading 9 plugins before I finally allowed myself to start a new post.

This week has been both good and bad for me. Two days ago I got really pissed off when I found out someone had said something about me that they had no business saying. It was complete ass talk. Idle lips… that sort of thing.   And when met with the question of whether my husband should have told me about it or not, by both himself and someone else, I felt confused. Of course he should have told me. He’s my husband. If anybody should have my back and look out for me, it should be my husband!

Thankfully I didn’t handle it as badly as I could have …been there done that. I was pissed, but I kept my cool enough to allow time to introduce a bit of reason. Some people are just so stupid, tho. Of all people to go saying bad things about you… a spouse? C’mon, now… WTF is wrong with people?!

But anyway, to change the subject to something completely unrelated…

I thought I was done obsessing about being organized but I can’t even fool myself. Maybe I’ll use this post as a way to think thru this. OK, so this is a bit of OCD talking, ok? If you don’t know what that’s like, then this whole thing will be puzzling to you. Here are the questions that go round and round in my head. “Thinking Rock? Things? Damn it, Trenotes has never gone away. Thinking Rock? Things? iphone app. Damn it, so confusing.” And it starts all over again and again. That’s my brain in a loop and the thoughts in my my head are always making confused left and right turns and hitting other thoughts until enough dirt is kicked up that all I can see is a dust bowl. I can’t see where I’m going. That’s the problem, really. I can’t see where I’m going. So my obsession with trying to GET organized is all about clearing my view and giving me a clue what direction I should go. I once drove somewhere with my dad while I had a migraine. My vision was impaired and I was a good 50% blind. Almost had an accident. That’s what thinking has been like for me. I’m basically running blind and I’m searching around on the ground for my seeing eye glass. Those three witches from Clash of the Titans comes to mind. Yep, that’s me.

When I use words like “see”, it’s a literal meaning.  I have to make a picture in my mind of what I should do next, and I can’t see it!  When I described the dust bowl, it’s literally a big fog I see in my mind’s eye and because of this I can’t take the next step.  I mentioned on FB how I’m a visual thinker (and many people are) so I literally have to SEE the path I’m taking with anything.  I’m talking specifically about work projects, house chores, what I want to do for my kids, car maintenance… just anything.   I have to see it or I can’t do it.  What a fucking disability that is.

I just thought of an exercise I could try.  Meditation while visualizing myself doing something to its completion.  Steps laid out in detail is the concept of GTD.  But maybe I never could put it in practice because I also need to visualize it beforehand instead of merely listing it on paper or some tool beforehand.   Man, what a thought.   The times I’ve cleaned house, that’s what I’ve done.  Hrm…  but when I did the garage, I didn’t visualize it, I just did it.  But still, I had a camera going the whole time and I was constantly thinking about the images being captured.  So maybe that compensated for my lack of foresight.   sigh….  My brain hurts.   Break time.