Welcome back!
Apologies that I've been slow with posts recently. The introduction of Bonnet Babble (video and podcast) has distracted me a touch. The plan is to cover all blog posts in the end, likely with bonus content as we get distracted with side quests 🤣.
As I've briefly explained before, in March 2023, I added Combined ADHD to my ever-growing list of mental health issues.
So how did this come about? Well, I've been medicated on and off since around the age of 13. None of the smarties ever worked, I'd had buckets of therapy and I was still struggling to be a functioning adult.
It was after going through private EMDR and ACT therapy that I twigged that something else must be going on in my muddled brain.
Almost like peeling an onion, in working through the more traumatic memories of Mother Dearest, I shed the shell of my trauma, revealing a tangy inner layer that made my eyes water 🤣.
At the time, I had formed better habits. I was exercising, my home life was stable and I'd come off a lot of my medications. As usual, with nearly everything I put my mind to, I took it too far.
After shedding the 5 stone I'd gained through lockdown and being put on medications that gave me the appetite of a hungry hippo, I began exercising 6 days a week.
Two days a week I was doing HIIT, 1 day of kickboxing, 1 day of pilates, and 2 days of weight training. I was in the best shape of my entire life, but some odd twangs and aches were kicking in.
One morning, I was subjecting a friend to my HIIT routine, when my calf went "SNAP". It had been tight and sore for months, but I guess doing high knees finally finished it off 🙈. I ended up doing naff all for 2 months, after visiting the quack and receiving a referral for physio that never materialised, nor could they tell me what happened to it 🙄.
I somehow managed to get back on the exercise wagon, and my foolish brain demanded that I immediately return to the levels I was doing pre-injury.
This time, I knackered my shoulder. I was at my kickboxing class learning a roundhouse kick. We'd had a visit that evening from the Head Coach, and I was really keen to make a lasting impression (that only child competitive streak came out to play). I didn't bank on it being the wrong impression though 🙈.
It was my turn to roundhouse the hell out of the pad, the Head Instructor critically observing. I lined it up perfectly, putting all my power into it. Then, for some reason, I did a little hop on my standing leg, the one holding all my weight, JUST as my other leg slammed into the pad.
As I had zero contact with the floor, the whole world suddenly turned upside down. When my brain caught up with events, I was lying flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me and surrounded by concerned students.
Thankfully, the head honcho asked me quietly if I was OK or if I'd just bruised my ego 🙈. My ginger genes had betrayed me as my face was the colour of a beetroot when I muttered back that I was a bit sore but my ego had taken the brunt of that mishap!
After this, I noticed my shoulder was hurting every time I took a breath in. So again I rested and went to the GP who dispatched me for an X-ray. No issues were found, and again no follow-up.
I only tend to trek to the quacks if I'm literally on death's door. So when I do, I usually have quite the list. I'm lucky that I've since moved GP surgeries and found the rare NHS unicorn who is more like the old-school family doctor. He's always running well over an hour late, but he will spend as much time with you as needed to cover everything.
The problem with great GPs, is they're only as good as the services they can refer out to. Which as I'm sure we all know, are rarely any good.
So, my leg is still gammy, my shoulder is still gammy, and in amongst all of that I've developed tennis elbow... even though I've not touched a racket in my life 🤣.
Winter was coming (it actually was), all the methods of managing my mind had fallen to the wayside, and I slipped back into the pit again, driven madly over the edge by the delightful SADs.
When I get low like that, I tend to live on my phone, having chats with my Internet friends whom I've met through our mutual interest in giant kitties 😸 and various mental health demons.
It was during one of these discussions with a mildly crazy Scottish lady (who also has cats), that we got onto the topic of ADHD. Her son has it and she was also on a very lengthy waiting list.
I'd been describing some of the more insane thoughts flying through my head when she asked if I'd ever thought I'd got ADHD. I didn't know much about it at the time and I was still rocking that age-old stigma that it was a condition only for devilish little boys.
So, I went down a Google rabbit hole. I did quite a bit of research, and because Facebook always stalks you, suddenly my feed was full of amusing videos describing how women struggle with ADHD symptoms. Things I'd thought everyone struggled with, turn out a lot of it wasn't normal.
I resonated with so many of the issues depicted in the videos. The overlapping chatter in my brain that was hideously loud, the inability to get started on tasks and getting stuck doing something irrelevant instead, arriving anxiously early to everything, having the memory of a goldfish... well, the list just went on.
Armed with a neverending list of symptoms, I booked a GP appointment. I just handed him my phone with my notes and said, "I've worked through a lot of my trauma, and most of my PTSD symptoms have calmed down, so why do I still feel crazy and have all of this nonsense going on? Is it something else?".
Bless him, he referred me immediately for an ADHD assessment. He called his PA while I was in the appointment and asked what the current waiting time was.... turns out it was 5 years. 😭
When I got home, that sliver of hope I'd allowed to worm into my brain erupted into ashes. I'd thought that I had finally discovered the answer. Only to be told, I'd be over 40 before I unearthed the truth.
I called my partner and let loose my hiccupy tears. He listened to my snot-fueled rant as I slowly transformed from defeated, and instead emerged as enraged.
Off I went down the Google rabbit hole once more. After a few hours of wanting to jump off a cliff at the cost of private assessments, I stumbled across something called "Right To Choose" (RTC).
What is this wizardry? The website I'd found said I could direct my referral to a private provider, and I could be assessed for FREE. What?! 😱 I'll admit, I was perplexed. I'd never heard of such a thing. After all my struggles, why was I only discovering this now?
The website, (link to it is here), was full of directions on how to go about enacting a RTC referral, along with an ADHD self-report scale, and a letter to give to your GP if they get prickly about it. They shouldn't, but you never know!
Thankfully, all I had to do with my GP was send over an email enquiring about this mystical process and suggest it might be a better way forward than waiting for 5 years. He sorted it for me straight away and just like that, instead of waiting 5 years with the NHS, I was on a 6-month waiting list to be assessed by Psychiatry UK.
Simple yes? Well, sort of. I was referred in November 2022, and in March 2023, I had my assessment via video call and was diagnosed with combined ADHD. What I didn't know, is there was a waiting list after diagnosis for medication. A SEVEN-month waiting list 😑.
Patience is not a virtue of mine and never has been. Time decided to move at a sloth-like pace, and the relief I'd felt from being diagnosed swiftly morphed into rage. I was thirty-five years old, fed smarties that never worked for over 20 years, and not once did ANYONE consider that I might be struggling so much because of something other than anxiety or depression.
Oh, the rage. Amongst all of this, the Beeb (BBC) waded onto the stage, lambasting private providers for diagnosing ADHD via video call. Completely missing the point that the only reason these providers exist is because the NHS provision is utterly atrocious.
I sent them a good old rant about that 🤣. I'll probably publish that separately at some point as it was another long one! Which I never got a response to.
During this waiting game, I ended up back on SSRIs, a desperate attempt to help with that looming pit of despair. My GP even wrote to Psychiatry UK asking if they could speed things up a bit as I was struggling, to which they said no.
It turns out that prodding them was the worst thing I could've done. Instead of being helpful, they turned around and told me I was "too unstable to start titration for ADHD medication", and insisted that I be seen by an NHS psychiatrist which meant a referral to the PCLS (Primary Care Liason Team). 🤦♀️
Over many years, I have tried and tried to attain an appointment with the lesser-spotted NHS Psychiatrist. Every time, I was defeated. This new hoop I'd been given, caused me a great deal of distress. I'd been in worse mental states before and hadn't managed to see one, why would they see me now? What happens if I couldn't?
Somehow, I think because my GP sent PCLS a strongly worded email with the evidence that my ADHD Psychiatrist was asking for this referral, I managed to get an appointment! I nearly fell over from shock when I got the call 🤣.
Off I went, with the aim clearly in my mind that I just needed this Psychiatrist to say that I was struggling with waiting and, I was not a risk to myself or others 🙄. Easy!
No, not easy. This Psychiatrist, after I'd given him a very abridged version of my history, decided I was Bipolar and needed to be given mood stablisers. No!!!!
Thankfully I knew a little bit about Bipolar Disorder after suspecting that's what my Mother had and going off on a research tangent. As calmly as I could, I explained that I don't believe I have Bipolar. When I get manic, I clean my skirting boards or organise the big cupboard in the kitchen. I don't often go and set my life on fire. (I mean I have in the past but shhhh, they were special circumstances!).
Thankfully, he was convinced and wrote a letter back to the numpty at Psychiatry UK saying I was fine to be medicated! Whoop! Hoop completed, or so I thought.
The medication journey was another faff and a half but I think I've waffled on enough for one post, I didn't mean to go off on that exercising tangent but never mind.
Hopefully, this has been mildly amusing as well as educational.
Stay sane.
KT