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Hey, hey! I’m Jessica…better known to most as either Jess or Jesse. My ADD or ADHD diagnosis came to me super early in life. We are talking 1st-2nd grader here, which works out to be around 6 or 7 years old. Lucky for me, I was not just diagnosed once in my life as having ADD/ADHD but twice. Just after high school I was diagnosed again…I must have thought somewhere along the lines that it had gone away…who knows?
There are only a few things I remember about being ADD/ADHD as a kid. Mostly things like, I was extra fidgety. So fidgety in fact, my 2nd grade teacher had to turn my desk around because I was always a distraction to her. She had a hard time teaching the class because my lack of being able to sit still. I remember things like doctor’s visits and not being able to eat certain foods. Other than those few things, most of my ADD/ADHD memories have been given to me by my mom, during those times in my life when I’ve asked….”What was I like as a kid?” or “How did you know something was wrong with me?”. Those were the instances where I got to see through someone else, what I was like as a child with ADD/ADHD. She loves to tell a story about me roaring like a lion at one of my preschool plays, guess this must have been the moment where she thought to herself “there is something very wrong here”!
When I was first diagnosed, I was put on the drug Ritalin. I stayed on Ritalin for 2 years. The choice to put me on Ritalin came indirectly from a brain scan that the Doctor’s had run. They found that my brain waves were not running parallel to each other as they should have been. Instead, they were sort of just crashing into each other. The Doctor’s believed that putting me on Ritalin would help “re-train” my brain patterns, which would in turn help my ADD/ADHD. My mom tells me that during those 2 years I really changed a lot. I was happier. I loved that I could control myself and that I could do simple math again. I could sit still long enough to think and concentrate. However, I couldn’t rely upon medication for the rest of my life, nor did my mom want me to. She knew I needed to find the skills to cope and succeed in a healthy way, my own way. So, after the 2 years were up, I was off the Ritalin and on my own.
Being diagnosed for the second time seems silly now that I look back, but at the time, I was in a strange place in my life. Maybe having that affirmation again, helped me move on, helped me know that this is something I am going to have to work at always. And I am okay with that. Living with ADD/ADHD is all I know, it is who I am. I love the silly quirkiness it brings into my life and I am up for the challenges it will continue to present for me. There will always be something that needs conquering and we each have something that needs to be improved upon within ourselves. I am just glad that I have been blessed with ADD/ADHD, I don’t think I would know how to be any other way. It truly is who I am!!
Other Doses
