ADHD? Wait… What?
Lisette Prende
ADHD? How can you have ADHD?
I didn’t say it but I thought it. I mean, I’m pretty sure I would know if my best friend of 30 years had ADHD, right? “Really? I wouldn’t have picked that,” I said, changing my phone to the other ear as I poured milk into my tea.
“Yeah,” she said. Her voice sounded strained, as if she was still processing her words as she spoke them. “It actually presents quite differently in women. We’re more likely to be inattentive than hyperactive. It’s more about working memory and organisations skills. Starting tasks, staying focused on them and then completing them.”
“Huhh,” I replied, my brain already whirling from her words.
“We’ve all been told it’s the boy who disrupts the class and can’t sit still, but it’s just as likely the girl who daydreams, doesn’t quite understand the instructions or can’t quite figure out how to start the assignment.”
“Shit. That…sounds a lot like me in school. Remember?” “Yeah…I was actually thinking the same thing.”
That was how my ADHD journey began. My best friend had just been diagnosed with combined type ADHD and, like all good hyperfocusing ADHDers, she had come to the realisation that I was a textbook case of Inattentive Type.
It was an epiphany.
I knew something wasn’t quite right. Well, I’d known it for a while but certain trends within myself were getting harder to ignore.
I’d just published my first novel and in doing so had officially launched my career as an Indie Author. I’d worked on the novel itself for three years. Writing, editing, rewriting and editing some more. At first the story was exciting. It came to me like so many ideas had come to me before – like a jolt of lighting, electrocuting me with inspiration and a desire to DO IT NOW! It was all I could think about day and night.
On August 8 2020 I published my first book, Bianca De Lumiere! The reviews were great and the feedback was glowing. People could not wait to read the next book in the series. And that is when the wheels fell off.
Just as it had with my previous obsessions, the desire I’d had to write an urban fantasy trilogy vanished almost overnight. Any dream I’d had of being an indie author floated off into the ether. In its place was a simple: Meh, bored now!
Ya see, there is a cemetery in my mind where faded passions go. Candle Making, Guitar Playing and Oil Painting are just a few of the names chiselled into the many tombstones. And now I stood in front of a shiny new tombstone, my feet sinking into the freshly turned ground. Despite all the work, all the tears, the licking of wounds, the blind determination to not ‘let it happen again’, it had indeed happened again.
I didn’t understand how other people could maintain goals, passions or any kind of focus on anything for more than a few months or the first taste of success. And while I was at it, why did other people find it so easy to be on time? Or cook dinner without serving soggy broccoli, actually put away laundry or close drawers/cupboards after they’d opened them?
It was these things I had been pondering when my BFF had let the ADHD cat out of the misplaced bag (which was probably also full of unsigned permission slips and a few mouldy bananas). Like any good friend who has just come off an ADHD research hyperfocus, she sent me a suggested reading list. It wasn’t long after I started reading Women with Attention Deficit Disorder by Sari Solden that it happened. My whole body prickled with goosebumps as I read the Inattentive Type case study. It literally could have been written about me. “Well, shit!” I said, as I reached for the phone and made an appointment with my GP.
I am very lucky to have an amazing GP who listens to what I say, empathises and does whatever she can to help me. She’d already been a huge support to me over the years when it came to helping me manage and treat my anxiety and depression. So, when I sat in her office and told her that I was pretty sure my depression and anxiety had actually been caused by my undiagnosed ADHD, she listened and she agreed it was definitely something we needed to pursue.
She referred me to the Community Mental Health Team in the Wellington region for diagnosis and I was added to the four-month long waiting list. I hate to say I was lucky because saying that really does shine a light on how limited and overrun our mental health services are in New Zealand. But to get an ADHD referral to a public team (for free) with only a four-month waiting list is about as magical as my YA urban fantasy novel (available on Amazon!).
My appointment with the psychiatrist was relatively straight forward if not a little frustrating. I’d previously had a screening phone call with a clinician to see if I really did potentially have ADHD. We spoke for an hour and I explained all the ways in which the symptoms I believed to be ADHD had affected my entire life. He empathised and agreed that it did indeed sound like I had ADHD.
But, three months later I sat in front of another (very young looking) psychiatrist, repeating myself, even a little less thoroughly than I had on the phone. He handed me some ADHD screening forms to fill in (one for me and one for my partner) and told me to bring in my old school reports (who even has those!?) and that we would meet up again in a month. “A month?” I said, assuming he’d misspoke. “I need to wait a month to get my diagnosis?” “Um, yeah,” he said, unable to meet my gaze. “I need to meet with my supervisor so we can discuss your case.” “Okay. What if I get the forms back to you sooner? Would that help speed things up?” “Yep,” he said with a jolly nod. “Could do.”
An hour later I was in my parents’ basement, trying to ignore the smell of mouse poo, as I trawled through boxes and boxes of moth-eaten school books. “Did you really need to find them today?” My mum said, holding her nose. “It’s Friday afternoon. Surely you could have waited till Monday.” I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed as hysterically as one can afford to when in a dank basement surrounded by poop and dust and possibly even sleeping possums. I knew as well as anyone else with ADHD that there is no waiting. If I didn’t get down and dirty with the mouse poo today, I’d be doing it an hour before my next appointment. At least, now I knew why.
Three weeks later I received my official diagnosis of ADHD Inattentive Type. It was a strange feeling of confirmation and hope. My entire life suddenly made sense. But more importantly, I finally made sense to myself. Many years before my diagnosis I got a tattoo. It reads ‘Nosce Te Ipsum’ which is Latin for Know Thyself. My ADHD diagnosis has reminded me that there is great power in knowing who you are and understanding why. It has changed my life in ways I never thought possible.
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