Side Effect or Symptom?

       One of the worst parts of starting treatment for any mental illness (including ADHD) is the myriad of side effects that accompany the beneficial effects of your medications, and the more medications you’re on, the worse it gets (I’m on five). Now, if you’re like me, you learn to just suck it up and ignore it, particularly when you are on a year long venture of medication adjustments. The problem with this is that your doctor can’t help you if they don’t know what side effects you’re experiencing and you may end up ignoring a real physical illness. 

       Last week I had the stomach flu, it started with a couple days of having no energy to do anything and then the next day progressed to nausea, lack of appetite, and [the opposite of vomiting], all of which can be attributed to my medications. However, that night I was very cold when I went to bed and had trouble falling asleep, when I finally did I woke up an hour later both boiling hot and freezing cold. Most people would have recognised this as a fever and chills, but I lack self-awareness (something that’s common with both ADHD and bipolar) and am so used to just ignoring every bad physical feeling I get that I didn’t realise I was sick. The following day was the same but that night I was kept awake by excruciating stomach pains and I finally realised that this wasn’t my meds, I had the stomach flu.  Unfortunately by this time I only had a day of discomfort left so the minimalist diet and excess of fluids hadn’t happened all week (probably why I was in so much pain) and I had probably infected a bunch of people, all because I thought my symptoms were side effects.

 

       Now, misdagnosing the stomach flu is not the end of the world (except that you become the “outbreak monkey”), but what if it was something more serious? It leaves me to wonder how many psych patients don’t receive prompt treatment for physical conditions because they wrote off their symtpoms as side effects. However, on the other hand, you risk becoming a hypochondriac, attributing even mild side effects to the plague (ok maybe not necessarily the plague but you get the point). So how do you find a balance between the two? How do you determine exactly what symptoms are real and what are side effects? Beats me. Hopefully this won’t be a problem for me anymore because I think we finally have my meds stabilised (which I’m very excited about, finally after a long year I can try and get back to my life!) and side effects should be minimal from here on out. For everyone else, I would probably consider informing your doctor of all your side effects, just to be safe, but try and refrain from storming into an ER claiming you have the plague!    

ADHD

So this isn't a real post but I thought I would give you guys an opportunity to understand some of the struggles ADHD can cause and it kind of goes along with what I was talking about in my last post.  These are postings from an ADHD blog that I came across and it probably explains things better than I ever could so have a read if you're interested.

ADHD and Grad School

http://neuropsychologyclinicadhdlab.blogspot.ca/2011/08/brilliant-minds-with-learning.html

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2007/march-07/learning-disabilities-in-graduate-school-closeted-or-out-in-the-open.html

ADHD and Social Skills

http://neuropsychologyclinicadhdlab.blogspot.ca/2011/09/adhd-and-social-challenges-at-work.html

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for ADHD

http://neuropsychologyclinicadhdlab.blogspot.ca/2011/12/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-invisible.html

Me? Immature?

       ADHD comes with a number of less than desirable qualities, most of which only really affect the person with the disorder. However, there are a few that make the general public not want to associate with us, for instance not understanding social rules. It has recently been brought to my attention that children with ADHD generally do not pick up on social niceties or appropriate and expected social behaviours and this leads to others seeing us as rude and immature. The social rules that most people just know are lost on us ADDers. How do they just know it? I have no idea, it’s not like they all took a course in social behaviour, but that’s exactly what a lot of people with ADHD need. This isn’t as much of a problem when you get diagnosed as a child because you are put in therapy or have special sessions in school where you are taught all the things that the rest of the world just picks up on. But when you’ve been diagnosed as an adult, who knows how different your life would have been had you known all these social rules.

       The reason I bring this up is because I recently had to contact someone to ask for a favour and I was told to make sure I asked nicely and included some chit-chat (I’m not sure whether I should read into the fact that I was expicitly told to include chit-chat regardless of whether or not it was required). My first thoughts were “What exactly is meant by chit-chat?” and then (once my therapist gave me some examples) “I have enough trouble coming up with things to say to people I know well, I have no idea what to say to someone I’ve only talked to a handful of times.” The ONLY thing that popped into my head was the weather, and that’s because I read on a website that is aimed at helping people with ADHD develop social skills that you should always be updated on the weather and the news so that you have something to fall back on during awkward silences (and yes I realise how pathetic it is that I have to go on websites to learn social rules but like I said, ADDers need a course on this). Now I never in a million years would have thought to add in some chit-chat at the beginning of my email, the way I see it is that if you don’t talk to the person regularly they’re going to know you want something so why not just come out and say it? Why do you have to dance around the subject first and waste everyone’s time? My therapist says that it’s just expected and that people like to be buttered up a bit before being asked for a favour (in order to entice me to partake in chit-chat, my therapist has equated it to foreplay, which I feel is way more important than chit-chat but anyway) which now has me concerned about how many times I may have come off as rude because I didn’t know to start off with some chit-chat, no examples come to mind but I’m sure it’s happened a number of times. Actually, one example does come to mind, when I email my therapist I always go straight into my problem, which is probably a little bit different than doing it with someone else but it’s probably still rude. I tried to ask her if it was rude but my emails to her aren’t being delivered at the moment so the answer is forthcoming…

       This whole discussion with my therapist about social behaviour and ADHD got me thinking about a number of other examples where I didn’t conform to social rules and probably came off as immature or inappropriate. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it now, and I just have to hope that, like my bipolar behaviours, people will put it behind them and realise that I’m working on it. My therapist wants to start an ADHD group so that we can be socially awkward together (actually the point is for us to learn how to associate with the general public but that’s how I view it). I’m not big on group therapy but we’ll see, and then I always have my websites. You better watch out, before you know it I’ll be a pro chit-chatter and will be out-socialising all of you! Ok not really, but hopefully I’ll improve.