Emotional Support Sisters

On Friday I cried in the car. They were happy tears sprinkled with a little grief. What triggered these tears? I enjoyed a shopping trip with my kids for the first time ever. This is despite the fact that it was almost 4 hours long. Despite Butterfly hiding in clothes racks and losing her shoe. Despite Beaver and Bear tormenting each other. Despite going to 4 different stores, getting in and out of the car, and traversing through parking lots. The happy tears were from enjoying a stressful activity; the grief tears were from the realization that I missed out on the fun for the last 13 years.

Here is the background story leading up to the moment I cried in the car on my way home from errands.

As I have mentioned before I have 2 kids with an official ADHD diagnosis, and another whom I know has ADHD, but is young enough that I have not gotten her diagnosed. 

I have joined several social media groups to help me understand ADHD from my child’s perspective. I also wanted insight and help in teaching my kids how to navigate life with ADHD. As I was watching and reading the insights they were providing I started to think to myself “Is adult/motherhood-onset ADHD a thing?” My introspection went far enough to try and treat some of the symptoms with Wellbutrin, a drug that has been known to help improve focus and decrease fibromyalgia pain. It caused me severe insomnia. I didn’t sleep for 2 weeks so I stopped taking it. I did not try and get diagnosed with ADHD, however. Who would believe me? As a kid, I was a star student. I was extremely responsible. I remembered to do everything I was supposed to. I only started showing symptoms after I had kids, and only in the last 3-5 years has it been problematic, and a lot of those symptoms also look like anxiety. 

The other prong of this story has to do with some physical symptoms I started experiencing at the beginning of this year. I developed a slight tremor in both of my hands. I also had some hand weakness. I didn’t worry too much about it, because when you have chronic illnesses weird things happen. Well in the summer the shaky and weakness got worse, to the point where tasks like touching a touch screen in the correct spot took a great deal of concentration. My hands also got tired easily. Playing the piano, holding on to things, or weeding became extremely difficult. I finally decided it was time to check things out. Blood work was fine. The MRI diagnosed a sinus infection but didn’t show anything in my brain that would indicate tremors or hand weakness.

I started explaining my symptoms a little more in-depth to my mom. She remarked that those are some of the symptoms my dad experienced with serotonin syndrome. I decided to wean off the Prozac and see what happened. Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I have very open communication with my primary care doctor, and he supports me weaning off of my very low dose of Prozac at any point in time. I regularly stop taking it in the summer, as my symptoms are more manageable then and I really like to poop regularly, which Prozac makes a little harder for me to do.  After about 4-6 weeks of weaning off, my hands stopped shaking, and most of the strength I lost came back. I had my solution! As a side note, the symptoms increased when I upped my dose of Prozac to counteract the extreme low I dipped into after not sleeping when on Wellbutrin, hindsight is 20/20.

Let’s skip ahead an additional few weeks, where I discovered that the Prozac was hiding a few symptoms from me. I started forgetting regular routines. I would start driving my kids somewhere, and pass where we are going or go the wrong way, and my kids have to remind me where we are going. I could see the messes all around me, but in no way shape, or form could I put the words together to ask for help. Planning meals became impossible, let alone shopping for them and then cooking them. My body felt heavy and sluggish. I completely imploded. I finally set up an appointment with a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner. After talking to her for 20 min she diagnosed me with ADHD.

I was excited to have answers, but still confused as to how I could be so successful in life up until my mid-20s, and then experience a slower decline. The most probable answer: school and music were my hyperfocuses, and because I was doing a lot of school and music until my mid-20s, my brain was happy. By the time I was 25, I had 3 very young kids, and they took up a lot of my time, so I had less time for learning and music, but still incorporated a lot of music when interacting with my kids through homeschool. I also taught music as a volunteer in church with the kids ages 4-12.  As I reached 30 I had 4 kids and a few more health problems that limited my energy resources. At that point, I pulled back and just focused on surviving.  My husband encouraged me to join a rather world-renowned community choir, but I was terrified by the 10-20 hour per week time commitment. He then encouraged me to join a closer local community choir, which I didn’t, once again afraid of the time commitment. The one thing I did do was help at my kid’s school musical as an assistant musical director. It was a lot of fun, had a short 3-month time commitment so I wasn’t overwhelmed by a long-term commitment. It was one of my favorite things to do in the last 5 years. That was a very long story to say that I should get over my fears of not having the energy and include music in my life again because my brain definitely needs it to be happy.

Back to the beginning of my post and enjoying a shopping trip with my kids. The difference between that shopping trip and all the other ones I have been on? I had an official ADHD diagnosis, and it was the first-day taking medicine specifically for ADHD.