A few days after the appointment outlined in Still Complicated my spouse received an e-mail to say that somebody had been found who was willing to see me. An appointment was made. I wasn’t sure whether it would lead anywhere, and I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to the situation, so I went for messaging a few of my friends, in what I guessed might be a gently humorous way, explaining what the next stage was:
In a twist to the “autistic adults don’t exist” scenario, instead of pretending I don’t exist (since I evidently do), or that I’m not autistic (since I evidently am), they’re now pretending I’m not an adult instead (which is probably closer to the truth anyway) and I’m going to see a child psychiatrist!
The appointment was set for the beginning of November, and since we were, by now, starting to figure that the only way to convince the medics of the “ADHD hypothesis” (although, unlike with autism, which had been a sudden thing, awareness of my ADHD traits had developed over many months and it was more of a self-diagnosis than a hypothesis by this stage) was to do the research and present the evidence, we set about doing just that. By the time we got to the appointment we were even more convinced, though, as usual, trying to translate this knowledge into spoken words to people who need more than “Well, y’know…” (because they can’t see the pictures in my mind, which I often forget) was going to be something of a challenge.
I liked the child shrink from the off. She didn’t treat me as though I was five years old, which was a relief – I’m not the most mature fortysomething, but being spoken to like I’m a kid drives me bonkers. She asked if it was OK for her to sit where she hoped to sit. She was wearing a calming black outfit that didn’t distract my eyes, she spoke calmly and clearly. And the stuff she asked was clear and generally stuck to things that made sense and were in a logical order. When she sensed I was getting overheated on something she changed direction and diffused it, and the result was that I managed to stay in the room for the whole appointment. She’d also clearly read a lot of what we’d sent, so had quite a lot of background information to start with. And she asked before shaking my hand!
As in the previous post, I’m not going to go into details right now because my head is still processing, and I’m trying to make the best use of the available energy I currently have. Those of you who read October will know that I’m still recovering from the energy running out, and that the fact that I’ve now returned to being able to blog again is a significant shift from how things have been for some while. I AM recovering, and we seem to have stopped my mental health taking a significant downward slide again, but I’m trying to take things gently and getting used to things being different, yet again, from how they were until recently.
I’d been massively stressed when we arrived at the appointment and although the appointment eventually went well, my stress levels remained high. My regular psychiatrist was also present, and the interactions with four people in the room (two psychiatrists, my spouse, me) were sometimes complicated and tiring. Fortunately my spouse was there to pick up on the bits I missed or the bits I couldn’t manage, and at some point towards the end of the appointment (although I almost missed the details because I was having to concentrate so hard), the child psychiatrist confirmed that had I been younger I’d have been diagnosed with ADHD as a child. The flippant suggestion in my earlier blog post had turned out not to be so flippant after all!!! And, on top of that, having discussed how my ADHD traits impact on my life NOW, I was given an adult diagnosis too.
Then things felt like they started to move rather fast. Health questions happened, medication was discussed, and my regular psychiatrist left the room and returned with a prescription! There was talk about it being something I might like to think about for a bit, and it being a big decision and so on. My spouse and I had done the research and had the appropriate discussions and considerations weeks before. We already knew what the answer would be.
And so, on 1st November 2017, at around 10am, I was diagnosed with ADHD, another diagnosis that I would have received decades ago had circumstances been different. The time and date get added to 20th February 2017, at around 1.30pm (when I received my autism diagnosis) as a significant point in my life.
It felt a bit odd. And several days later I said to my husband how strange it was that I was quite comfortable going round telling the world that I’m autistic and that felt pretty much normal to me, but that it felt a bit odd saying that I had ADHD! However, a week and a half later (probably almost two weeks by the time I manage to publish this post) it’s starting to feel right and OK and fine and much less odd. I already knew I did have ADHD, but the official confirmation, like with autism, made a big difference to me.
And I now have some medication that might help to make a bit of my life a bit easier. There’ll be a blog post to write about medication at some point I imagine and it’s still really early days on “the stuff” as I’ve been calling it, but so far signs are very promising. I’ve only been taking it just over a week and we’re still analyzing effects and there will be discussions in the future of dosages and so on – yet more things for my mind to process, yet more things to learn and observe and so on.
And it’s another beginning of another thing, a new thing. In true autistic style I’ve become “interested” in ADHD (“interested” in the sense of “when I get interested in something I get VERY interested” interested) and you might notice this blog wandering into areas of neurodivergence that are not exclusively autism-based from time to time.
Still so much to learn. Still so much to discover. Still so much to try and interpret and explain.
And the medication? Is methylphenidate. Yes, the stuff that’s in Ritalin!!! I’m not actually on Ritalin itself, but a slow release version called Concerta. However, the throwaway remark from last year now sounds rather different because I HAVE (almost) “ended up as one of those ‘Ritalin kids’”!!!
I’m somewhat large and I’ve had rather a lot of birthdays, admittedly, but I was diagnosed by a child psychiatrist!
Maybe I’m just a big kid after all!
Finally Knowing Me: An Autistic Life 