Blogging about blogging and ADHD

So...

I've got an ever growing list of blog post ideas, but I'm struggling to find my words tonight. I'm sure I read somewhere, sometime ago, that if you just type the first thing that comes to your mind the words will come. Maybe I have bloggers block. Maybe I've just spilled my guts too much this week already. Maybe I'm just dying to sit down and catch up on True Blood. Maybe.

The response to my post on Monday was overwhelming. The beautiful comments both here on the blog and through Twitter were humbling in their show of support. The number of page hits I received was encouraging. Encouraging me to (over)share, encouraging me that I have a voice worth publishing online here, in my little corner of the interwebs.

I feel I am spending an ever growing amount of time online (if it was possible to spend any more time than I already was!). As I click from page to page, link to link, I get an enormous sense of community here amongst the blogosphere. This is a place I want to be. There are so many amazing voices out there! It makes me think how lucky we are to live in this time where people can connect, at times at such a deep level, with people we have never met. May never meet.

In the past couple of weeks I have also read a lot of blog bashing in the traditional media and on other websites. I don't understand why blogging bothers some people. I am not trying to be a journo here. This is just little old me typing a few words on the 'puter as an outlet for my crazy brain. And anyway, you have the power blog-hating people! Choose not to click that link, choose to close that browser window, choose to move onto something else. Don't troll, bitch and moan, and carry on. It is unbecoming. It looks desperate and ridiculous because why do it? Nobody is hurting you. Oh, and setting up a pseudo blog that's sole purpose is to take the piss and ridicule is just downright sad.

Anyway, 'nuff said about that. Back to me! This is a blog about ME after all.

Last week I wrote how Shrink had diagnosed me with ADHD. I spent the week on Ritalin, working up from half a tab, to three days on one whole 10mg tab three times a day, then 3 days on 1.5 tabs three times a day. It was pretty weird shit.

The stuff made me feel focused, energised, less forgetful, more motivated, more confident, more creative, more happy, more positive about the future. Fucken bonus! Dream drug, you'd reckon. But that was only from when I first swallowed the little white pill til about 5ish. Then things changed.

By the time 6 o'clock came around anxiety had fully set it. I felt cold and slightly paranoid. I found it harder to speak in my usual volume, my breathing became laboured and I started searching my brain for something to feel bad about. I did not like it. Not. At. All. The first few days were ok. The anxiety only lasted about half an hour but as the days wore on it got harder to see the benefit of taking the medication at all. The positives must outweigh the side effects is my golden rule to drug taking these days.

On Wednesday night I had an anxious episode that lasted three and a half hours! Awful. That was the night I cooked the chicken pie (see Wordless Wednesday for pics). My parents were down from the Mountains and I asked them to look after Noo's evening time stuff (feed/bathe) while I cooked dinner. I just focused on the recipe and the job at hand. Several times I wanted to lay down and do my usual mantras (I will not die, I will not die, I will not die. This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass.) until I felt ok again. I pushed on and by 7.30pm, like magic I was through to the other side. Weird. Beyond weird.

Had my weekly appointment with Shrink on Thursday and told him everything I felt. I told him I thought the best days were the ones I was only taking a single 10mg pill three times a day. He told me that this was only a trial week to find out what the right dose for me was. Then he moved me to a slow release form of methylphenidate called Concerta: one 36mg tab a day, taken in the morning. The first day of that pill was today.

How did I feel? Better than Wednesday, that is for sure. I liked only having to take one pill in the morning. The clock watching for the Ritalin was annoying and too reminiscent of my cocaine days. Feeling the up and the down and then gagging for the next up to avoid any down. Bloody hell! I do not want to be on that rollercoaster! I just want to be normal, damn it!

Noo was home with me today. I felt slightly agitated in the morning, not long after taking my first Concerta, but this could just have been because getting Noo dressed and out the door always agitates me. We went to the Entertainment Quarter to see the new Thomas and Friends movie. It was awesome! We had an entire massive cinema to ourselves! We got lollies and popcorn and sat right in the middle of the cinema. Noo could talk and scream and run around all he liked and I could relax! It almost made it worth the enormous amount of cash I haemorrhaged at the candy bar, just to have this huge massive room to ourselves.

Noo, looking so worried that Thomas might fall over the cliff.

Later we met my sister and a friend for coffee and everything was ok but I started to feel a little edgy as the day wore on. My thought processes continued to be more linear and my memory was amazing really. (Although I did forget to pack clean undies and trousers for Noo and he had an accident that required a major clean up but I won't go into that lest an anti parenting blog person reads this and declares all we blog about is our kid's poo!)

The anxiety at the end of the day was still present with Concerta but less so than on the Ritalin. The drug tappered off at around 5ish again but much more gradually. At that time I initially felt quite tired but that passed. I've actually felt kind of energised from about 7ish but I'm now (at past 11pm) feeling like it is time to go to bed. Except for one night I haven't had any trouble sleeping on the Ritalin. Tonight will be the test for Concerta.

I'm now buggered. I'm off to brush my teeth and climb the ladder to my loft bed and snuggle in for a lovely eight hours sleep (fingers crossed).

Good night lovely blogosphere. And thank you.

V.