Diagnosis

After I absolutely crushed that last blog post and delivered on that comedic genius that I’ve sort of become known around here for, not to brag or anything, I’m here with something a teensy bit more substantial. But don’t worry you won’t leave here without a healthy dose of mind-bending hilarity.

This past week has been an incredibly critical and pivotal step for me in my adult life.

After mere weeks of waiting for the NHS to help me get assessed and treated for ADHD, I am very happy to announce they came through in flying colours. The well-oiled machine that is the NHS, running at it’s typical clockwork precision, has finally delivered and changed my life. I can’t believe how fast it’s all come together. WOW.

Or… that’s what I’d like to say if any of that were true.

In reality, after waiting 2.5 years for a diagnosis to then wait more time for treatment… after many an email, missed correspondence being incorrectly filtered by Google’s mail system, forgotten appointments, tears, near mental breakdowns, actual mental breakdowns?, relationship foundations being rotted away like damp wood, and just a general feeling of “not great”ness, I caved and bought my way into mental health treatment like some kind of damn Duke of Whateverhamshire.

I feel simultaneously blown away and also not remotely surprised to see that if you just throw money at a problem it seems to magically become a smaller problem. Who knew?! Well I guess we all kind of know that, but it’s one thing to know it and another to actually do it, and in all honesty that’s one of the first times in my life I was able and did do that. I didn’t come from a lot of money, and so investing in my mental health, as obvious as that sounds and should be, took absolute screaming into my ear for a couple years before anything came from it. That and nearly having it covered by a kind benefactor that is my mother in law, until the last minute when my conscience(hubris?) wouldn’t accept the money and did it myself.

Anyway, I think this could turn into a small book if I go on about the grubby feeling of helping make a monthly payment to a rich psychiatrist’s yacht (I’m speculating here okay? I don’t know what he does with his cheddar (money)). But holy hell did that get things moving… Really makes you think about inequity when you see the power and life-saving potential of being able to buy your way to skipping the queue. The scene in Titanic of the rich man throwing a wad of cash at the lifeboat operator comes to mind… Best not to dwell on this I guess?

Healthcare politics aside, in the span of about 6 weeks and enough pound signs to make my eyes water, I was able to be granted the luxury of spending lots more money on posh drugs to get high with every day! And no, dear reader, I don’t mean illicit street drugs, I’m talking about good old legal pharmaceuticals. The good stuff. Lisdexamfetamine to the savvy connoisseurs out there, or Vyvanse to those in the know, or perhaps to the layman good ‘ol Speed.

Sure, a good old fashioned diagnosis is great and all, but come on we know it’s all about those sweet sweet mind altering substances at the end of the day.

Jokes aside, it’s been a roller coaster of emotions extreme all-time lows for me this past year, reckoning with new fatherhood and the tumultuous arguments that came with. I’ve suffered extreme bouts of depression and mood swings, felt like I wasn’t safe alone at times, and let my physique go entirely which then fed into the cycle of lack of confidence and low body image. Ruminating on how I have been or behaved over the last year feels like watching an mortifying home video of you making an absolute clown of yourself. I’d rather not even dwell on it too much and just hope to god this diagnosis can help me to improve myself.

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift” – Kung Fu Panda (lol)

The diagnosis itself consisted of a very intense 3.5 hours of revisiting old traumas and describing my personality to a therapist. I took a computerized test (back to using American Z’s so I don’t see the red squiggle of doom) which consisted of pressing a button when two shapes appeared of the same shape and color in a row. It was about 20 minutes of this, so it was intentionally boring. I warned the therapist that I’d probably do extremely well on this, because I’ve spent my life on computers since I can remember, far earlier than most people my age due to the fact that my Dad was a programmer and had a computer at home before most people did. Thus began my life of nerdyness and spine curvature. That, coupled with decades of learning to “mask”, if I can call it that, and adapt, I felt I’d aced the test. She didn’t tell me how I did, and I forgot to ask (ADHD!), but I assume I did pretty well, because she told me that she wasn’t ready to give my diagnosis, and wanted to meet with me once more. As I was going to be traveling for a few weeks, this would mean another 3 weeks of waiting. That might not sound like a lot, but after the year I’ve had let me tell you, it might as well have been in the year 2057 in that moment.

I felt a sense of grave disappointment… I may NOT have ADHD? What? Have you seen me? How can this be… I’d spent the last 6 months telling myself I surely have it, and that getting medication for it might be the solution to all my problems. I would picture myself a changed man. Sitting down in library out of Beauty and the Beast, studying and acing tests, captivating my students with lectures I’d meticulously prepared, hell who knows, maybe I’ll go back to school and become a rocket scientist, I may even end up in space boldly discovering new planets or whatever they do. This was never a real dream of mine, but hopefully it made my point that I NEEDED this diagnosis, and I needed some fucking answers!

Furthermore, she added, you have demonstrated some traits of Autism. That diagnosis is a separate, even more tear-jerking £900 if you want it. Hmmmm probably not… thanks though. I mean yes I do want it, of course I do… I want answers. But, as she described it, having an Autism diagnosis is more about understanding yourself and coping strategies, as there’s not a medication for Autism like there is with ADHD. I wasn’t really expecting the Autism at all. It’s a bit like when you go to order an ice cream and they just throw in some random extra “Do you want donut flavoured Cadbury Creme egg sprinkles on it? They’re free?” Uhhh wow what? I didn’t know that was a thing… sounds like it could be good or disgusting…. but it’s free, let’s do it baby. YOLO! “Oh sorry, did I say free? I meant £900. They’re really specialized and scarce and flown in from Tanzania.” Hmm… I’ll probably pass for now and google these cadbury donut pieces and download some free audiobooks finding out if they’re ethically sourced and whether people in Tanzania like donuts or if they’re just pandering to American palettes.

Okay right, cool, Autism. It felt like a bit of a freebie actually, in that I can go away and look into that one and learn about it. Even if I don’t have it (I probably do), it will help me to understand students, my own family members (Dad & Brother PROBABLY – they don’t care to know).

Fast-forward to 3 weeks later, a phone call with my partner this time to set the therapist straight – “Hunny, do I need to tell you how many times this man has left his keys in the door? Do I need to tell you the number of times I’ve tripped over his damn shoes on the floor, the chronic procrastination, the way he plays a video game watching a movie and a Youtube video all at the same time?” That’s not how my wife talks, for the record, I am just upping the sass levels for comedic effect.

At the end of the call the therapist confidently gave me my ADHD diagnosis and pointed me back to the Autistic traits that she’d happily diagnose for me if by some miracle I’d won the lottery over the last 3 weeks.

Were it not for the fact that I was extremely distracted mentally by a terrible fight my wife and I’d had the night before, I’d be bouncing of the walls. Instead, I felt very little in that moment. My triumphant victory was going to have to come in drips and drabs over the next few days. And besides, deep down I already knew I had it… it’s the meds that I need to pull me out of this hole of depression my collar and slap me and shout “QUIT BEING A LITTLE SHIT. YOU’RE NOT THAT OLD STILL, YOU HAVE YOUR LIFE AHEAD OF YOU, YOU HAVE A PARTNER WHO LOVES YOU, YOU LIVE A PRIVELEGED LIFE. YOU’RE A WHITE MAN FOR F$$% SAKE, CAN THEY EVEN GET DEPRESSED? Oh boohoo, my Starbucks latte isn’t as frothy as it normally is. Give me break pal.”

Now when I spoke of the power of throwing money at a problem, good lord was that fast. I mean, it’s not America in the 2000’s when I first tried ADHD medication and all it took was my Mom saying “He never does his homework!” and then the doctor laughing and giving me my speed, and then hopping in his Benz and cruising back to his penthouse while whistling along to Vanessa Carlton. But not a full week later, I got handed a prescription for ADHD meds. “Monitor your heart rate, you may get side effects like constipation, start with 25 mg and then increase after a week, blah blah blah” Yeah yeah man, just give me the drugs already! Look, by now you may be thinking I’m an avid drug user, but that’s really not the case. Maybe it’s the autism fixation coupled with the hyperfocus of ADHD, but this medication felt like my last hope of becoming a normal human being again, and every day that passed without it was another day that I spent wondering if I’d make it to the next. It just has to work. I’m out of ideas here… Therapy, running, nothing else is working.

The paper fluttered in my hand, a delicate delicate butterfly I dare not touch lest I damage its beautiful wings. I couldn’t take my eyes off it for fear of it just magically vanishing and me spelunking back into my cavern of despair. With ADHD this stuff happens man… have I told you about losing my passport in the Airport? Maybe another time… I cradled it like it was my newborn son himself on the day he popped into this overcast corner of the world.

Arriving at the GP, I handed it gingerly to the cashier. It felt like the time I’d turned 21 and bought my first beer. I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong but was still afraid the cashier would say “stay right there”, and show up with two officers pointing at me, “that’s him!”. As they disappeared away with my newborn baby prescription, I looked on nervously. “We don’t have enough to fill it, so you can get half and then come back again”. No good… this pharmacy is too far. I’ll have to try another one. What if the next one thinks I’m some junkie who downloaded this form off the internet? What if they tell me, I’m sorry, but the psychiatrist who wrote that for you is a con-man. His real name’s Larry Smithers. We’ve been chasing him for years, and he’s probably half way to Toledo by now.

But, my worries were for nought. They handed me over the prescription after 15 minutes of waiting… or was it 8 hours? “Have a nice day, enjoy your speed!” She didn’t say that. “Oh but it’s another £100, lol, thanks byeeeeee”. She probably didn’t say that like that either. I walked away clutching my now 3 month old baby who’d grown from a wee piece of paper to a nice little brown bag. Isn’t nature beautiful?

A few minutes later I get a call from an unknown number. “He.. Hello?” “Is this Mr. Roe? Your payment didn’t go through, you’ll need to come back” “Uhhhh okay I’ll be right there sorry.” What the hell? Had this barrage of therapy and psychiatrist appointments wiped my bank out? Had Larry Smithers used his deep web skills in a Toledo internet cafe to wipe out my account? Maybe I just looked like suspicious visiting two different pharmacies in an hour? Maybe they were going to arrest me for fraud. Maybe it’s Maybelline! I swear, I didn’t do anything! I am a good man! A decent man! Just a weird glitch in the system. False alarm, the payment went through this time and I was on my way.

Tomorrow begins my medication journey!