ADH…;-)

I’ve been researching adult ADHD lately because there are several symptoms of it that have been bothering me lately with the increased stress of COVID and anticipating my husband’s surgery and 3-6 months of unemployment. First of all, I learned that the most recent changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental health conditions took away ADD (the non-hyperactive or inattentive form of attention deficit) as a separate diagnosis, and now all attention deficit diagnoses fall under one category of ADHD. The symptoms I’ve been struggling with include lack of focus, compromised short-term memory, irritability, disorganization, restlessness, difficulty sleeping, difficulty sustaining attention and following instructions, losing things necessary for activities, etc. However, these symptoms can also be the result of other things which apply to me, like trauma, PTSD, grief, and traumatic brain injury. So who knows what’s the actual cause of my frontal lobe mayhem, but it has definitely been worse lately.

The symptoms were so troubling to me that I asked my doctor if I could try a new drug I had heard about that can help people with TBI, ADHD, binge eating disorder, etc. The drug is called Vyvanse, and so far I can tell it’s making a huge difference for my ability to focus and get things done. On days when I had 2 hours to myself to get stuff done while my daughter was at preschool, I would spend half of it trying to decide what to do first, and then just give up and play a game on my phone. I was wasting a lot of time, and time is my most precious gift (other than my faith and my family, obviously) because I can’t ever get it back again. On the first day I took Vyvanse, I could tell a huge difference in my ability to make decisions and focus. It was like someone fired up the synapses and told them to stop fighting with each other. It was like they were suddenly put into a “getalong shirt.” 😉

I guess it doesn’t really matter if I have ADHD or not (if I do, it’s the inattentive type, not the hyper type), as long as the medicine is helpful. My research shows that for it to be a true ADHD diagnosis, it also has to have been present in childhood. I did well in school and never caused problems, so I was never on anyone’s “radar.” Looking back, the area where I notice my struggle was in reading. It was very difficult to pay attention to a book or anything that I read. (It still is!) If I got things wrong on math, it was because I didn’t read the instructions carefully enough. On standardized tests, all of my scores were always in the high 90’s percentile range, except for reading which was usually somewhere around 80%, and sometimes it was even lower. I always thought I was just a bad reader or stupid, but now I realize that I was having trouble sustaining attention while I was reading, especially if I was reading something super boring like those standardized tests tended to be. (ha!)

Vyvanse can also help people with binge eating disorder. While I’ve never been diagnosed with this, I definitely have the tendency toward it, especially when I’m feeling stressed. (And who hasn’t felt stressed during COVID? If you haven’t, please tell me your secrets!) I started realizing recently that my problem wasn’t really binging on food. I’m not (usually) a person who will eat an entire pizza or carton of ice cream, or go through the McDonald’s drive through and consume large quantities of food. My problem was FORGETTING that I had already had junk earlier in the day, and then mindlessly eating more junk at night when I was feeling bored or just wanted to relax. So I am trying really hard to cut out eating anything after dinnertime, and enter everything I eat into an app called My Fitness Pal. I’ve been brushing my teeth right after dinner, and that helps to remind me.

I hope the medicine helps me remember to be more consistent so I can develop new and healthier habits. My whole life I have struggled with being consistent with tasks. You could say I am consistently inconsistent. I will spend hours creating a new organization system for my paper files, only to throw it out the window when I forget what I was going to do. Consistency’s cousin is commitment, and I have also recently felt “convicted” of needing to be more committed to consistency in my life. I am committing to becoming healthier in body, mind, spirit, family, friendships, and home, and I’m putting this blog on the interwebs to prove it. Feel free to ask me how I’m doing with my healthy decisions. This is the year of change. Since Covid and my husband’s health issues have forced lots of change in my life, I am also choosing the change that I CAN control – my daily decisions.

I don’t expect health or consistency to be achieved overnight, but commitment is a moment’s decision, and I have made it. As Amy Grant said, “It takes a little time sometimes to turn the Titanic around.” Hopefully this medicine will make it a little easier to steer the ship in the right direction.