Okay that sucked

[ysobel]

Had a video chat with my primary care doc.

In her perception of the world:

* doctors always look for signs of autism and adhd in children
* it is rare if not impossible for anyone to get through school without all appropriate diagnoses
* this includes dyslexia (oh my god the skepticism in her voice when she was telling me about another patient of hers that ~thinks she has dyslexia~ despite having gotten ~all the way to grad school~)
* adhd meds are stimulants and work the same way on all brains so giving adhd meds to an adhd person will cause more problems than it's worth
* because I am not in school and do not work, there is absolutely zero reason to pursue a diagnosis
* (when I pointed out that it's not just a matter of "I can't do things I need to do" but "I can't even do things I WANT to do" she said that it would be ridiculous to put me on meth so I can watch a movie)
* adults with adhd don't take meds anyway, except maybe as-needed if they're in an exceptionally stimulating environment
* I am only having these problems because of increasing physical limitations and also anxiety (even though I've said several times that the behaviors and thought patterns go back to childhood, pre-dating even the existence of my depression)
* my existing diagnoses (FOP and anxiety) are all I need to get adequate support (ahahahahahaha)

I just ... ::flails incoherently::

Oh, and she was baffled by the hostility (actually desperation) in my responses because her telling me all this was just her, like, explaining the roadblocks I might face, and she's just the messenger. Even though none of it was phrased as "you might get resistance because xyz", it was all "xyz is absolute fact and also your needs don't matter because you don't work"

She's usually really good about stuff. Just ... not this.

Comments

[ysobel]

Especially AFAB kids who were "gifted" and therefore could compensate for academic slip-ups.

And I was an obsessive rule follower so had even more flying under the radar, because I needed to do what was expected even if it was hideously boring. My sister is more adhd than I am -- she "didn't bother" doing the work and she got school library privileges revoked because she was reading in class rather than paying attention -- and she didn't get tagged as adhd until adulthood.

I think my doctor is just extremely clueless about adhd. But it feels kind of like fighting a brick wall because I told her several times that I didn't get screened as a kid because they were looking for hyperactive boys, I told her that adult dx was something that happened especially with women and/or inattentive adhd, and still she kept going back to the "but it's diagnosed in schools!" thing.

To, you know, ~prepare~ me for the roadblocks I might encounter.

I didn't bother explaining that there are (anecdotally, anyway) people with adhd who get initially diagnosed with just depression and anxiety. Or that adhd meds work differently in adhd brains. Because just ... I couldn't.

I was crying, on the video call, trying to express how important this was to me, how I just fucking want my brain to work. (The way my therapist explained it, among other things adhd meds can kind of bridge the gap between thinking and doing, so that things actually get done.) This was "hostility". And she said "I feel like you've been told ... something ... that makes you think a diagnosis will fix things".

...yeah, I've been told that *I'm not actually crazy or a failure* and that adhd meds might help my brain function so I can actually ... function. Weird concept.

Argh.

But also 💜

[conuly]

still she kept going back to the "but it's diagnosed in schools!" thing.

If the parents request an evaluation and also the student is sufficiently impaired to be below grade level, then yes.

[prissi]

seriously lolz no.

ADD/ADHD is not diagnosed in schools, ever. that's a medical diagnosis. they may say things like they suspect ADD/ADHD and tell you to go get your child evaluated by a doctor. but the school psychologist can't manage/prescribe the meds, so... just no.
and then of course it really baffles me because then sometimes the school districts will fight me on things like an autism diagnosis, which is ... also a medical diagnosis.
then there are the schools that apparently send kids to me to get a psychoeducational evaluation for dyslexia or a learning disability and I'm just like... umm, that's your job, I can't do that evaluation...

the school evaluations have to be requested by the parent, yes. but getting them to actually do them can be a painful process. and then even the psychoeducational testing they can do is very limited -- limited resources, limited time, and sometimes the test(s) that's picked may not show the deficits the child has. actual psychoedcuational evaluation takes days and days and days, spread out over weeks, is exhaustive, and is not cheap.

[conuly]

but the school psychologist can't manage/prescribe the meds, so... just no.

Yeah, and btw, the schools would (on the whole) love for you to do nothing but meds rather than any additional accommodation that the student might require. No taking away recess? A hard limit on how much time the student is allowed to spend on homework nightly, with no penalty for incomplete work? Gasp, shock, horror.

[ysobel]

Yeahhhhh, even if they'd been looking at anything other than hyperactive boys, I wouldn't have gotten snagged. My parents didn't know to request evaluation, and I was smart enough that I could compensate for the various flubs (like the time in 8th grade history when I missed the deadline for a long term project because it was just written on the board (among probably a shitton of irrelevant stuff) and never announced, and when I begged him to let me turn it in a day late because I hadn't been aware and had it at home, he docked me to 69, of which 1 was actual error in work and the other 30 was being late; but my overall work was good enough that I had an A in the class) and so I would have been overlooked.

I also think my obsession with following rules masked some of the add stuff, because my sister kept getting in trouble for not doing work (and really was way more overtly add than I was, just inattentive variant, and she didn't get dx until adulthood either) but I was too Good to not follow orders, so I just procrastinated and then did shit at the last minute.

Schoolwise I was in the Gifted & Talented channel, and of course "gifted" kids can't have adhd right, lolsob. So yeah, her insistence that it would have been caught just kind of baffles me. In an ideal world, sure. But this is far from ideal...