I was six when my mother passed away. Six years old when she went in for outpatient surgery and never came home. And the month after she passed, I started first grade. I was overwhelmed, scared, confused. And motherless.
I don’t have a ton of memories from that time. But I know school was hard, and different. I had to sit in a desk all day for the first time. There were new rules. Lots of kids. People to talk to. My teacher was older. She reminded me of a grandma, and she had more rules than Grammy Bee did.
I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and put on medication. My dad was overwhelmed with the loss of my mother. Van was only eight and Bradley was four. There was a lot going on in the house. I remember the first time I took the medication. How I could sit for hours and color or complete pages upon pages in my spelling workbook. And I loved the praise I would get from my dad when I finished something and got most of the answers right.
Food tasted different, though. Not quite right. As if someone had put something metallic in it. My appetite at school didn’t exist, and by the time I was nine, I’d learned to share my snacks with my friends so I wouldn’t come home with a full lunch bag. But at night it was like a black hole opened in my stomach and food suddenly tasted right again. And I would eat and eat and eat.
Bedtime was always hard. It took me forever to fall asleep. And even when I did, sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep. My dad would give me melatonin, and most of the time that worked. Except it gave me vivid dreams. Sometimes bad ones.
By the time I was a teenager, my grades were stable and I was managing okay. But when I went to college, things started to shift. We had to up my dose because I was struggling to focus in my classes. I started having panic attacks, and I wasn’t sleeping. So we added a sedative, which helped with the sleep. And when the stress got to be too much and the panic threatened to take over, I had an antianxiety medication that I could take.
I was handling what life threw at me. At least I thought I was. Until I wasn’t anymore.
And the sleeping pills stopped cutting it. I added melatonin to the mix, because it was natural and could tip me over the edge. But those stopped working, too, and then the energy drinks came, and the excessive coffee, and when I was having an exceptionally challenging day, I started on the caffeine pills.
Until my body literally couldn’t handle it anymore.
A few days into my treatment, I meet with the psychologist and the doctor to discuss the results of all the tests. The therapist is a woman in her forties named Edith. She and Dr. Storey sit in comfy chairs across from me.
We’ve talked about the medication and when and how it started and when it got out of control. Since I’ve been here, there have been adjustments to my medication, doses lowered, and the sleeping medication has been changed to one meant specifically for anxiety that’s also supposed to help me sleep. So far it’s been successful.
It feels like so much has changed in such a short time.
“How are you feeling today, Teagan?” Edith asks.
“I’m good. I slept well last night.”
“I’m glad to hear that; the foreign environment and all the changes can make it difficult for some people.”
The first couple of days were the hardest, being alone in a place I didn’t know, shining a spotlight on all my issues. “I know it’s necessary, though. So I can get the space I need to regain control of my independence.”
“This is very true.” She crosses her legs and laces her fingers together. “I wanted to talk to you about some of the diagnostic tests we ran when you first arrived.”
“Okay.” I take a sip of my water, suddenly nervous.
“We’ve had some time to observe you and review your full medical history. I believe you were misdiagnosed as a child.”
“Misdiagnosed how?”
“I don’t believe that you fit the profile for attention deficit,” Edith says.
“But I couldn’t pay attention in school.” I remember feeling lost back then, unable to handle the separation from my dad, afraid one day I’d come home from school and he’d be gone, too, just like Mom had been.
“You were a child grieving the loss of your mother, and you lost her weeks before the school year began. It was a lot of change, more than you could handle. And considering the way things were at home after she passed, it makes sense that you were struggling with the demands of school. On paper it looks like the medication was doing its job, but when we look critically at all the data, I believe the diagnosis is incorrect, which means the Adderall contributed to the worsening anxiety and created the sleep disturbances.”
“What does that mean?” I’ve been on some form of ADHD medication for nearly twenty years, and we switched to Adderall when I started college.
“We’re going to wean you off the Adderall and monitor you closely for side effects while you’re here.”
“What will that look like?” I’ve been sleeping okay over the past week, despite it not being my bed. And the lack of Aaron to snuggle with. That’s one of the things I miss the most.
We review the potential side effects, talk through my fears and concerns, and come up with a plan on how we’re going to wean me off the medication I’ve been dependent on for the past two decades. It’s not a high dose, so Edith believes I’ll be able to wean off the drug in my remaining time here.
We work on reducing my dose during my stay. It isn’t a fun process, and I have good and bad days, but as the drug leaves my system, I slowly start to realize the impact it was having on my body and my brain. That instead of making the anxiety better, the medication heightened it. It also contributed to my sleeping problems, and it made my concentration and memory worse instead of better.
Two weeks into treatment, Van and my dad come to visit. I’ve been able to talk to them daily, but we don’t have access to our cell phones most of the time, apart from an hour in the evening.
My dad pulls me in for a huge hug and then steps back and holds my shoulders, his eyes roaming over my face, taking me in. “You look great. How are you doing, sweetheart?”
“I’m good. I’m glad you could come.”
He steps back, and Van moves in. His hug is longer and tighter. “I’m sorry I didn’t see what was happening,” he murmurs.
“It’s okay.” I squeeze him back. “I didn’t see the problem until it was too late either.”
And I truly didn’t.
I take them on a tour of the grounds so we can talk with some privacy.
“How is everything going?” Dad asks. “How is treatment?”
“It’s good. A lot of work, but good.” We take a seat on one of the picnic benches. Fall has settled in, and the leaves have started to create a colorful landscape. I wanted to wait until I saw them before I told them about my new diagnosis. “The doctors did a bunch of tests when I first got here, and they believe I was incorrectly diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.”