ADHD?

Careless, thoughtless, forgetful, lazy, distracted, messy, impulsive, can’t handle helpful criticism without shutting down. These are words that people have used to describe me for most of my life. Other words sound better, like carefree, free-spirited, busy, interesting, fun…at least that’s the way I usually describe myself.

People often tell me to try harder, and believe me, I do try. I spent years looking for the next best thing in organization, lists, journals, and apps. New methods usually work for a while before I get distracted again. Members of my family shake their heads at each of my new obsessions. I don’t understand why no one I know wants to join me when I dance Thriller each October, and they kept asking me if I had enough music books, picks, and capos after I bought a banjo for my birthday and wanted all the things that eventually culminated in my pirate party this year.

My doctor had another way of looking at it. On Thursday during my annual exam, I told her that people in my life are worried about my lack of focus, distractibility, and impulsiveness. I had just taken a battery of tests, including one for dementia, which I passed one hundred percent.

She told me, “You don’t have dementia. You probably have ADHD.”

Since then I can’t stop thinking about ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder).

My childhood friends remember me as always coming up with crazy ideas and having the charisma to convince everyone to go along with it. I called Andy and Naomi last weekend, and they remembered many stories like this one. One summer afternoon, we were splashing around in one of those hard plastic kiddie pools in the backyard. It was before my parents divorced, so I was around ten. That puts Ellen at about eight, Naomi at seven, and Andy at four or so. I was a little old to splash in the small pool, so I took it to the next level. We put it on top of a little house that my dad had made for Ellen and me. He made it about six inches taller than my height on one side and six inches taller than Ellen’s height on the other so that it had a slanted roof and was less than five feet tall at its peak. The roof was made of one large piece of plywood. So, we put the swimming pool on top, pulled the garden hose across the yard, and filled it up. Then the four of us climbed in. It was a blast splashing up on top of the world for a while, but then I started wondering if we could make a water slide. We scooted the pool inch by inch until it slid off the roof with all of us on it! We tumbled out and thought it great fun, except that I was the one closest to the rose bush and got my leg torn up by some thorns. We decided we absolutely needed to do it again and put it back up, but I was bored by then. Andy remembers getting left up there all by himself. He describes his next fall as being stuck in a gerbil wheel headed straight into the rose bush. Andy was often the victim of our great ideas because out of our gang (Andy’s sisters Naomi and Heather, and Ellen and I), Andy was the smallest. He was the one we sent down the laundry chute along with the cat, and he was the one we put in the chest freezer while we danced on the lid.

When I was a teenager, and we lived at the ranch house out in the country, we had even more shenanigans. That time all five of us tied our hands together with our mom’s nylons and ran through the forest was my idea. Also, it was my idea to take a board of wood and go grass surfing down the hill. The tall grass was perfect for a smooth ride down. I talked my best friend Melanie into scaling the cliffs along Salmon Creek. I’m the one who thought it would be fun to give everyone the chance to drive my new-to-me car around in the high school parking lot. These are the legends of our childhood. My sense of fun almost always had a measure of impulsivity to it.

The internet says that ADHD can be hereditary, which might be why most, if not all, of my sisters have that diagnosis too. Mom was legendary for both her drive to seek out fun and her bad housekeeping.

Last week I finished a wonderful book of the testimony of a popular vlogger couple, Able to Laugh: Finding joy though the struggle is real, by Jade and John Reynolds. I loved the way they share how their Christian faith is a huge part of who they are without being preachy. Jade is wheelchair-bound, and John has ADHD. I sympathized with John as he told his story, especially how freeing it was to have his diagnosis and realize that so many of the “character flaws” he had been struggling against his whole life were hard-wired into his brain. With the proper diagnosis, he could develop strategies to work around his ADHD tendencies instead of trying to “do better.” He said God gave him a wife with infinite patience to help him.

I was touched by his story but still didn’t see myself in it. I have always made sense to me. Of course, I can’t sit still for very long because my six children keep me moving every minute of the day. Then I started reading the descriptions online, and I can’t help but recognize myself in the lists of symptoms. It reminds me of when I read Autism in Heels and knew it was talking about me. Getting any new likely diagnosis, whether it be physical or mental, makes me feel broken at first, but being able to understand myself better drives me to be the best person I can be.

I had other good news at the appointment. My weight is down along with my A1C and my cholesterol. My blood was the proper thickness, and my heart rhythm is back to normal.

I guess I need to buy some books on strategies for living with ADHD, but right now I’m hyper-focused on losing weight, keeping my living room and kitchen clean, and learning to play Rainbow Connection on my banjo.

In the meantime, I’m still my carefree, free-spirited, busy, interesting, fun self.