ADD progression

The children's father has finally managed to get to England through all the pandemic insanity, so they've gone off with him for ten days. Against my expectations, he was able to get an exemption from quarantine... which I honestly find deeply unsettling, since everything I read on the government's own website indicated this would not be the case. We were prepared for a situation where he came to the UK, spent two weeks quarantining with the children and then went home again. I don't know quite why he was given more freedom, but it makes you wonder who else the regulations were waived for.

At any rate, he's been left to his own precaution regime, and it's still going to be a weird and isolated break for the kids, but they get to see their father for the first time since February and they get a break from the four walls of our flat.

I admit, I'm a little bit concerned about what I'm going to do with myself without human company for much of this ten days, but it's the first time since March that I've got a break from being Mum, that I've been alone in the house.... It's hot and sticky today with rumblings of thunder, so the first thing I did once they left was to strip down to my underwear and watch the documentary, "Howard", on Disney+. Nobody to whine about their turn on the TV or to be mortified at how much of my legs I'm showing!

(After such slovenly beginnings, I promise that I have put my shorts back on and am writing this to move towards productivity... or I'm procrastinating on putting the laundry away. One of the two!)

A Video Call

Before all the worry over how the kids' trip was going to work, I was intending to post about developments in my ADD diagnosis. The previous post, about my brain and its ruminating, was supposed to act as context.

Right before lockdown started, I had made it to the top of the waiting list for an appointment with an adult ADHD clinic. At the end of July, I had that appointment via video call with a consultant. I wasn't warned that the call would be two hours long. A little too ironic... I did wonder if I had failed the assessment because I lasted the full two hours!

It was definitely a far cry from my American diagnosis, where I filled out a single-sided questionnaire. On that basis, my GP in the States merrily started me on medication a week later. (We had great insurance in the States, so nobody was deliberately cutting corners on my healthcare.)

Doing this on the NHS in England has been a much longer wait, but it's also been more thoroughly done. They asked to see my old questionnaire for reference, but I filled out their standard one (multiple pages), and my mother had to fill out another one (slightly fewer pages) based on her memories of me as a child. In July's video call, I talked to a full psychiatrist who referred back to these questionnaires frequently. (I think it was November when I filled them out, so I couldn't remember what was in them!)

The key thing the doctor brought up is that you would typically expect ADHD / ADD distractions to be external, but mine were internal. He theorised that the ruminating might simply be due to depression/anxiety, but as my symptoms pre-date the end of my marriage, I think ADD is exacerbating my depression rather than the other way around.

While I didn't put it that succinctly in the call, I was very proud of myself—and relieved—for managing to stand my ground on that point, and not let my brain get confused by the new line of argument. We did discuss other options, such as the possibility that I'm on the autism spectrum, which I do think is entirely likely, but I was firm that my priority was addressing the attention issues.

At any rate, the doctor believed my statements that this were affecting my life and was a concern when I was driving. He logged off, saying he would need to review his notes to be sure I met sufficient criteria for a diagnosis, and I went and collapsed on the sofa for the afternoon.

A few days later, a letter to my GP was cc'ed to me via email, summarising the call in frighteningly thorough detail (right down to what I was wearing and where I was taking the call!). I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive subtype (and social anxiety).

The benefit from my US diagnosis here is that I have already tried a couple of different medications and was able to report their effects to the doctor. While I thought that the one I was using wasn't legal in the UK, it sounds like they can prescribe that for me, especially in the knowledge that I didn't have any side effects. The next step was a cardiac assessment by my GP, which I had on Tuesday, just to tick the right boxes before they prescribe me anything.

Fingers crossed, I'll be on medication again by the time the kids are home. Lockdown doesn't really require a lot of focus, but the ruminating mind isn't helping the emotional state.

The storms never broke, but clouds and showers have passed steadily across the sky and the temperature has dropped to something much more bearable. Time to go through the dutiful motions of adulthood: tidying up the laundry and eating leftovers for dinner...