Well, shit.
Remember back in December when I had that little bitty inkling that I had ADHD? Well, exactly one psychologist appointment later, the results are in. I’m just nuts. No, wait. I’m nuts and I have ADHD. Cool.
Now, the “NUTS” assessment is all of my own. That’s not an actual thing that a professional clinical psychologist said to me. That would be unprofessional. But I know he was thinking it. How could he not? I single visit in, I’m rambling about my family history and all of the fun things that I’ve had to deal with throughout my life. I guess in retrospect, I’m probably the last person that knows me to know that there’s a reason that I’m like this. My whole family is like this, why wouldn’t I be. After all, it’s GENETIC, motherfuckers.
That said, I’m sure that this dude deals with this kind of stuff all the time. But I don’t, so there.
Ran through the questionnaire/history part, then moved on to some super cool “flashy letters test” on his laptop. It’s supposed to register not only hand-eye coordination, but also impulse control and things like that. I though, “Sure, I’m good with computers… there’s no way I don’t ace this thing.” Boy, was I wrong. About two minutes in, and I’m like, “FUCK. This is hard.” I kept kicking myself when I’d click the spacebar when I shouldn’t. But then again, that’s the point. I’m sure that I failed miserably.
So after that 10-15 minutes (which felt like a lifetime) of a test, he sits back down, clicks a few buttons and there are the results. Yeah, so ADHD is zero surprise, based on my history on the results. I believe that his exact words were, “Yeah, you definitely have ADHD. There is zero doubt in my mind.” A weight was lifted from my shoulders almost immediately. I had to travel for a work thing later that evening, so I had a lot of time driving to process it, plus the rest of the weekend after.
Since the psychologist would have to write up his report to send over to my regular GP, I figured that I’d get a jump on getting in to see him by making an appointment. I waited until Tuesday because monday was a day of acting like the laziest person on the planet and just sitting around. (Plus, it was like 6° outside. Fuck that noise.) When I called to make an appointment, the receptionist told me that I had just beat her to the punch, because I was on her followup list for later in the morning. Went ahead and made an appointment for the next day, because my doctor’s schedule was miraculously open for some reason.
Cut to today, when it’s spitting freezing rain from the sky and it’s like exactly freezing outside. Great. I literally SLID down our walkway to the garage, trying not to lose my footing. Good thing I had some boots with an aggressive tread on them, otherwise my tailbone would have been screaming from the inevitable falling on my ass that would have happened. Instead, I looked like an old man scuttling along dragging my feet the whole way. But, of course, the roads were fine. Cool.
The usual small-talk with the receptionist and nurse practitioner happened and then I sat there in the empty exam room for what was probably another 10 minutes before my GP came in. I haven’t been in to see him since April, but he was the only one that didn’t give me shit about it. I appreciate that because, well, I have a short temper and the other people were on my last nerve about it. I KNOW that I haven’t been in. Give me a break. I’m here now, and I’m trying to deal with my issues or doing self-care or whatever. But walking in the room with a scraggly ass beard similar to mine (which I really need to trim) at 9 in the morning just made me feel a lot more comfortable. Afterall, this is the first GP that I have been to since my favorite old dude that I used to see in town before we moved. I’m sure that he’s since retired, but he was a straight shooter. You told him your issues, he told you what he thought. The end. No bullshit. He’d also tell me that I was getting fat and I needed to drink less pop. Like, I know that, but putting it in my terms always helped, or at least it did for me. Not sure how his (lack of) bedside manners went over for his other patients.
After reviewing my docs from the psychologist, my GP was straight forward about what I needed to do to get to feeling like a functioning member of society again. He talked with me about my current meds (really just a multi-vitamin and a high blood-pressure medicine) and how I’d been doing with things, gave me a prescription to some new meds, and chatted briefly about how I’m gonna be on a controlled substance now and the hoops that I’m gonna have to jump through in the future to deal with this annoying condition. Like FUCK me, I’m gonna have to go in monthly for a paper prescription to fill at the pharmacy and take quarterly drug tests. I mean, not a problem because I don’t do drugs or anything, but it’s the annoyance of it all that I’m sure will bug me in the first year on this crap. He wished me luck and told me to call his cell if I had any issues or wanted to chat about it. I like this dude.
So, now I’m on a more annoying med cycle than my wife, who has a similarly annoying process for her meds and getting prescriptions. So glad that we’re a big mess of medical conditions now, between us and our kids. Yay. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s gonna help, but I’m hopeful. Hopeful enough that I was able to sit down and break out this stream-of-consciousness post in one sitting. Progress!
Oh, and it’s cold out, so I haven’t worked on a single things on/in the house. I’m still in semi-hibernation mode, but that might change here shortly if I will now have the motivation to actually get shit done again. Expect me to write more often now, and to shortly annoy everyone about how I’m starting to write things down in a Bullet Journal so that I can track my habits, tasks and other stuff in a more cohesive way. Maybe it’ll last more than a few weeks this time. Hah.