A couple of days ago I finally got an appointment I was waiting to have for a very long time, and the result of it is finally getting some meds to try and help me manage the symptoms of ADHD that have been causing me a lot of problems recently. But saying it like that feels like glossing over some of what happened so I'm going to take a step back.
I have been trying to get a diagnosis for what I struggle with for a long time, definitely since I was 16, but possibly longer than that as well without me remembering the details. In places I feel like I have had little support on this, and other times I've had support that hinged upon conditions. We can help you if it's this, but since it's not that, the support has now gone, and you need to look elsewhere, but we're not going to tell you where. It's not what we thought it was, but we're not going to tell you what we think it might be. Maybe that's because specialists are very focused on their own areas, and anything outside of that is kind of just the void. It was difficult and there were times I struggled with it a lot more than other times and plenty of times where I thought just accept that this is your life. The idea of advocating for myself wasn't something I really understood for a while, and it's something I haven't always had the energy or capacity for.
I walked into the appointment that I had a couple of days ago with a coffee in my hand and a splitting headache because I had barely slept due to worrying, and because I needed to get up rather early to get there. I thought I was going to have to advocate for myself to be able to get the medication that will hopefully help me. Without trialing the medication I have no idea if it will work, but I honestly thought I was going to have a fight on my hands to get to trial it, because hey, there's a lot of other things we can try first, but then the clinicians pretty much told me that they know that trialing the medication is the best thing, that for eighty percent of people it works and the hope is that I'm in that eighty percent. They needed to run a couple of tests to make sure that my physical health could cope with the type of medication I would be prescribed, and then they got me the prescription. I honestly didn't expect to feel disappointed at not needing to fight, but I guess that I had worked myself up to it so much that I couldn't comprehend not having to fight. I guess that when I have spent so long feeling like I was banging my head against the wall, getting somewhere without having to argue, getting support without having to demand it just feels weird. It's not bad, of course, but it is weird. And unexpected.
I'm writing this on the eve of beginning the medication, because I needed to drive today and I couldn't start a new medication and then drive, and on the day that I got the tablets it was too late when I had them for me to be able to then start them that day. (I also wouldn't have started them and then been driving the next day because that sounds like a recipe for disaster, not knowing how they would impact me overnight.) Obviously, I'm probably going to write something when I've had a few days or weeks to settle on them, but I guess that is dependent on how they make me feel and whether or not they realise my biggest fear, which is that the medication to help me function stops me from being me, or it limits me in how much *me* I can be.
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