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Back in November, I wrote up this post about finally—finally—getting the ADHD diagnosis I'd been seeking for years. I talked at length about the relief I felt at having an explanation for my lifelong attention span problems, and looked forward to beginning medication and seeing what happens next. It was nothing short of exhilarating, being at last on the proverbial road to Getting Better.
Since then, that road has consisted of eleven or so red lights, followed by a sharp left.
Given how long it took me to get my shoe in the door of someone, anyone, who would even consider diagnosing me with ADHD or anything else treatable via controlled substances, I should have seen the bureaucratic stonewall that loomed ahead. My GP refused to write the prescription, claiming insufficient background with psych meds; when my therapist tried to follow up, she left dozens of unanswered messages at my doctor's office before throwing up her hands in surrender. Her own mental health facility had a several-month waiting list, as did every other provider in a 30-minute radius. And once I'd resigned myself to a waiting game, my health insurance lapsed, leaving me with no options at all while I tried to get it reinstated, a process I described as being like the Atari 2600 ET the Extra-Terrestrial game, except that every fourth screen it punches you in the balls. (I'm still as of this writing uninsured.)
It has been suggested that my autobiography should be titled ...And Then It Got Weird. At this point in our story, things got immeasurably weirder.
As many of you know,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rain_herself is currently working toward her doctorate in psychology. During her spring semester she took a class on diagnostics, and one of the projects in that class involved working in a team with two other classmates to choose and execute a focused set of tests for a specific volunteer. I was chosen as subject because (a) I'm readily available, (b) I find these things weirdly fun, and (c) my recent diagnosis gave them something specifc to focus on. So one afternoon after work, I headed over to her college for about an hour's worth of testing, a dozen tests in all.
And I broke the tests.
All of the tests selected revolved around attention and memory in some capacity or another, usually having me memorize number strings or words or pictures and then parroting them back. Roughly seven of them are specifically designed as ADHD indicators; of these, exactly zero indicated likelihood that I have ADHD. Not a damn one, because I kept passing them. Not just passing: demolishing.
Let me give you an example: One of the first tests involved the tester (one of Andrea's classmates, in this case) rattling off pairs of words. Some of them were obviously related, like "sky / cloud" or "city / town," while others weren't, like "tree / luck." (Fans of the Milgram experiment will recognize this as the fake experiment-within-an-experiment that the unseen "subjects" were supposed to be learning.) The pattern was that he would read off the 20 or so pairs, one at a time, and then again one at a time he would name off the first halves of each of the pairs in random order, and I'd have to recall the second halves, e.g. if he said "sky," I'd have to say "cloud." After doing this once, we'd repeat the whole process with the same 20 pairs, only he'd read them off in a different order (still clustered in the same pairs, though), going through the whole shebang four times in all. The idea was to track my learning curve, whether my score went up over time and how quickly, and whether I forgot any I used to know along the way.
I got them all right the first time, got them all right the second time, got them all right the third time, got them all right the fourth time, got them all right when the rest of the testing was done and he asked if I still recalled any of them. They were supposed to be tracking trends, and the trend was I just plain knew it, full stop. And the other tests went pretty much the same way. In the end, the three of them came to the inescapable conclusion that I simply don't have ADHD, a diagnosis backed up by the entire class who heard their presentation, and their professor. Well, fuck, now what?
We had a long, hard talk about the "now what?" question on the drive home after the presentation. I wasn't as upset as I might have expected upon losing my tidy wrapped-up-with-a-bow capital-A Answer to what's wrong with me. I think that's because the tests didn't just refute the diagnosis, they refuted the very idea of what I was capable of. It's kind of like thinking your ankle's sprained, then discovering that hey, you really can dance after all! But that said, something clearly wasn't and isn't right. I don't function the way I want to be functioning, and there's something blocking my attempt to fix it, and if it's not ADHD then what the Hades is it?
That's when Andrea brought up the one test that I didn't do well on. It involved a pair of stories that I was told to "remember exactly." I failed that one abysmally, and stressfully so. Because I was going for exactitude, I tried to store it all in my brain verbatim, and when I fell a step behind I had no way of getting it back and more or less surrendered. I managed to pull out some details—cities, dollar amounts, times of day—but that was about it. Andrea pointed out that I missed the whole focus of the exercise, in the way that former "gifted children" often do: I completely skipped over the stories' emotional content. Each tale had some bit that listeners could empathize with: worry over money, a small crisis, relief, love. I came away with none of that because I was so laser-sighted on "getting it right" that I didn't internalize what was actually going on.
I blinked as she explained all this to me. "Wait...are you saying that this is all just a weirdly-manifesting anxiety disorder?"
That's exactly what she was saying. And she was backed up on that, too. Classmates and professor.
I'm sure many of the people reading this who know me in real life are reading about me having an anxiety disorder are howling, "Oh, now THERE'S a shock." I knew it was there, too, and I knew it was pervasive. I knew that it robs me of my initiative, my self-esteem, my art, my social life, a bunch of my past relationships. I had no idea it was robbing me of my memory and focus as well, and now I'm torn between wonder that it's all connected and wanting to punch things. I've been joking for years that I really only have one problem with 28,917 faces, but apparently I wasn't actually kidding. The hardest to learn was the least complicated, as the Indigo Girls sang.
So again, I ask, "Now what?" Medication is still out of the question without insurance, and I'm not sure I'd take it even if it were an option; I like Klonopin just little too much, if you follow. I do have a Klonopin playlist on my iTunes now for the commute home, all acoustic, warm, familiar music. I listen to rain sounds at work. I do the breathing thing. I've learned to notice when my shoulders are hunched around my ears and how to bring them down again. And I've begun to recognize where my focus goes, and to let the breathing and the music and the rain sounds put it back where I want it.
It all helps, but jeezum crow, this is such a big dragon to slay, one I'm all too familiar with by now, and one that's scorched me way too often. I know I'll get there, knowledge that's a big deal in itself. Wish me luck. Be patient with me. We'll get there. Promise.
Since then, that road has consisted of eleven or so red lights, followed by a sharp left.
Given how long it took me to get my shoe in the door of someone, anyone, who would even consider diagnosing me with ADHD or anything else treatable via controlled substances, I should have seen the bureaucratic stonewall that loomed ahead. My GP refused to write the prescription, claiming insufficient background with psych meds; when my therapist tried to follow up, she left dozens of unanswered messages at my doctor's office before throwing up her hands in surrender. Her own mental health facility had a several-month waiting list, as did every other provider in a 30-minute radius. And once I'd resigned myself to a waiting game, my health insurance lapsed, leaving me with no options at all while I tried to get it reinstated, a process I described as being like the Atari 2600 ET the Extra-Terrestrial game, except that every fourth screen it punches you in the balls. (I'm still as of this writing uninsured.)
It has been suggested that my autobiography should be titled ...And Then It Got Weird. At this point in our story, things got immeasurably weirder.
As many of you know,
rain_herself is currently working toward her doctorate in psychology. During her spring semester she took a class on diagnostics, and one of the projects in that class involved working in a team with two other classmates to choose and execute a focused set of tests for a specific volunteer. I was chosen as subject because (a) I'm readily available, (b) I find these things weirdly fun, and (c) my recent diagnosis gave them something specifc to focus on. So one afternoon after work, I headed over to her college for about an hour's worth of testing, a dozen tests in all.And I broke the tests.
All of the tests selected revolved around attention and memory in some capacity or another, usually having me memorize number strings or words or pictures and then parroting them back. Roughly seven of them are specifically designed as ADHD indicators; of these, exactly zero indicated likelihood that I have ADHD. Not a damn one, because I kept passing them. Not just passing: demolishing.
Let me give you an example: One of the first tests involved the tester (one of Andrea's classmates, in this case) rattling off pairs of words. Some of them were obviously related, like "sky / cloud" or "city / town," while others weren't, like "tree / luck." (Fans of the Milgram experiment will recognize this as the fake experiment-within-an-experiment that the unseen "subjects" were supposed to be learning.) The pattern was that he would read off the 20 or so pairs, one at a time, and then again one at a time he would name off the first halves of each of the pairs in random order, and I'd have to recall the second halves, e.g. if he said "sky," I'd have to say "cloud." After doing this once, we'd repeat the whole process with the same 20 pairs, only he'd read them off in a different order (still clustered in the same pairs, though), going through the whole shebang four times in all. The idea was to track my learning curve, whether my score went up over time and how quickly, and whether I forgot any I used to know along the way.
I got them all right the first time, got them all right the second time, got them all right the third time, got them all right the fourth time, got them all right when the rest of the testing was done and he asked if I still recalled any of them. They were supposed to be tracking trends, and the trend was I just plain knew it, full stop. And the other tests went pretty much the same way. In the end, the three of them came to the inescapable conclusion that I simply don't have ADHD, a diagnosis backed up by the entire class who heard their presentation, and their professor. Well, fuck, now what?
We had a long, hard talk about the "now what?" question on the drive home after the presentation. I wasn't as upset as I might have expected upon losing my tidy wrapped-up-with-a-bow capital-A Answer to what's wrong with me. I think that's because the tests didn't just refute the diagnosis, they refuted the very idea of what I was capable of. It's kind of like thinking your ankle's sprained, then discovering that hey, you really can dance after all! But that said, something clearly wasn't and isn't right. I don't function the way I want to be functioning, and there's something blocking my attempt to fix it, and if it's not ADHD then what the Hades is it?
That's when Andrea brought up the one test that I didn't do well on. It involved a pair of stories that I was told to "remember exactly." I failed that one abysmally, and stressfully so. Because I was going for exactitude, I tried to store it all in my brain verbatim, and when I fell a step behind I had no way of getting it back and more or less surrendered. I managed to pull out some details—cities, dollar amounts, times of day—but that was about it. Andrea pointed out that I missed the whole focus of the exercise, in the way that former "gifted children" often do: I completely skipped over the stories' emotional content. Each tale had some bit that listeners could empathize with: worry over money, a small crisis, relief, love. I came away with none of that because I was so laser-sighted on "getting it right" that I didn't internalize what was actually going on.
I blinked as she explained all this to me. "Wait...are you saying that this is all just a weirdly-manifesting anxiety disorder?"
That's exactly what she was saying. And she was backed up on that, too. Classmates and professor.
I'm sure many of the people reading this who know me in real life are reading about me having an anxiety disorder are howling, "Oh, now THERE'S a shock." I knew it was there, too, and I knew it was pervasive. I knew that it robs me of my initiative, my self-esteem, my art, my social life, a bunch of my past relationships. I had no idea it was robbing me of my memory and focus as well, and now I'm torn between wonder that it's all connected and wanting to punch things. I've been joking for years that I really only have one problem with 28,917 faces, but apparently I wasn't actually kidding. The hardest to learn was the least complicated, as the Indigo Girls sang.
So again, I ask, "Now what?" Medication is still out of the question without insurance, and I'm not sure I'd take it even if it were an option; I like Klonopin just little too much, if you follow. I do have a Klonopin playlist on my iTunes now for the commute home, all acoustic, warm, familiar music. I listen to rain sounds at work. I do the breathing thing. I've learned to notice when my shoulders are hunched around my ears and how to bring them down again. And I've begun to recognize where my focus goes, and to let the breathing and the music and the rain sounds put it back where I want it.
It all helps, but jeezum crow, this is such a big dragon to slay, one I'm all too familiar with by now, and one that's scorched me way too often. I know I'll get there, knowledge that's a big deal in itself. Wish me luck. Be patient with me. We'll get there. Promise.
