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| A brain of someone with ADHD. (Credit: adhd-brain.com) |
It
was a few days before Memorial Day 2013; Nicole remembers the exact weekend.
Her sister didn’t come home from school that Thursday night. She didn’t answer
any texts, phone calls or Facebook messages. Her friends didn’t know where she
was, or they were covering for her. Either way, Nicole*’s 17-year-old baby
sister was missing. In the Chicago suburban town with a population of 20,000,
kids didn’t run away, or at least those stories weren’t shared.
The following afternoon Nicole got a
phone call from an unknown number. It was from Ann*, her sister. She was safe,
but she wasn’t coming home. Instead she was packing. The then-high school
junior spent the next few days at a friend’s house.
“We knew where she was then, but I
was still was so mad at her,” Nicole, 20, said. “I thought she was being
selfish, leaving our family. She didn’t realize how much it affected me
personally. It broke my heart thinking she wasn’t happy here and that she
didn’t trust me enough to tell me how she was feeling.”
The
sisters were as different in personality as their looks. With the exception of
their blue eyes, they looked nothing alike. Nicole’s blond locks contrasted Ann’s
deep brunette hair. Nicole looked like their dad; Ann looked like their mom.
The
summer of 2013 marked a turning in point in Ann’s life, in her family’s life
too.
Ann
has hyperactive-impulsive attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
She was diagnosed in 2011 at the age of 15.
Although Ann came home a few days after the Memorial Day holiday, things
were different. The family of five went to therapy for one session, but never
returned, Nicole moved out of the room the sisters had shared for the past 13
years.
“I do things all the time without thinking
about it and I think that to an extent it is the ADHD,” Ann said. “The other
part is just me being stupid. I don’t take the time to consider what I’m doing.
I just kind of go with it and be really impulsive.”
Her actions
last summer are the perfect example, she said. “I was just like, ‘I don’t like you and I’ll decide
if I ever want to even come back.’ That’s my best example…. There’s a line when
it’s part disorder and [and part] just being stupid. I think ADHD is a factor,
but I’m not blaming it on that or making an excuse but I definitely think it
was a factor.”
ADHD, according to the National
Institute of Mental Health, is one of the most common childhood disorders. Symptoms
include trouble staying focused and paying attention, as well as controlling
one’s own behavior and hyperactivity. There are three subtypes, which are
classified as predominantly hyperactive-impulsive, predominantly inattentive,
and combined hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive.
Ann was diagnosed with
hyperactive-impulsive ADHD at the age of 15. The average age of the onset of
ADHD is 7 years old. The disorder affects 9 percent of children ages 13 to 18 in
the United States, according to the NIMH. . It can continue into adulthood, although some grow out of it.
Ann didn’t realize that she may have ADHD
until her therapist, who she was already seeing because of a personal issue
with a friend her freshman year of high school, brought up the possibility.
“Once we kind of resolved that
[personal] issue…we started talking more about organization skills and that
kind of stuff because that’s when I wasn’t doing that well in school anymore,”
Ann said. “They said that maybe there was a bigger issue and not just because I
don’t feel like [doing my school work] so that’s when they decided to test me
for ADHD.”
At that point, Ann met with a
psychiatrist near her hometown. The actual test took about an hour, she said.
She sat in front of a computer and directions on the screen indicated that she
was supposed to press a certain button when a certain shape appeared on the
screen.
“It was more like a game than a
questionnaire,” Ann said.
When the results came back, they
showed that Ann had the most impulsive answers. They tested her for two
different types of ADHD to determine which she was affected by the most.
“The impulsiveness came from
instead of me seeing the shape on screen, I’d be like ‘Oh shit, there’s a shape
on the screen’,” Ann said. “I wasn’t really thinking about ‘I’m supposed to do
this for this one or I’m not supposed to do anything for this kind of thing.’”
Her inability to recognize what
messages her brain receives and what exactly she is supposed to do with those
messages, indicated impulsivity.
Ann
explained that her ADHD affects her life each day, even simple tasks such as
cleaning her room.
“When
mom tells me to go clean my room I can receive the message, but I don’t get all
of the messages, I get them but they don’t actually go to my brain,” Ann said.
“That’s what the actual disorder is, because my brain doesn’t process all the
messages. Other people get the entire message and realize that they have to go
do it now.”
Instead
of completing the task assigned to her, she said she gets distracted and doesn’t
do what she is supposed to and then eventually forgets what she was supposed to
do.
Before
the diagnosis, she didn’t think that her behavior or choices were connected to any
type of mental illness.
“I never noticed anything [within
myself] and was never like ‘Maybe there’s something wrong,’” Ann said. “I
think mom and dad might have, but I don’t think that ever really crossed my
mind besides having mild depression.… But when they started telling me about
ADHD I was like that makes a lot of sense.”
“When they were telling her about
ADHD’s symptoms at first, I think she finally realized she’s not so different than
other people,” Ann’s mom, Joy, said. “She’s not weird or strange, there are
others that feel and think the same way she does and there are ways to work
with it.”
Upon
her diagnosis, Ann was prescribed Concerta to counteract the ADHD symptoms. She
takes 36 mg daily; 56 mg is the average dose, she said, so she is prescribed
below the average.
Concerta
is a methylphenidate and is the only ADHD medication that lasts for an entire
day. Concerta is the only ADHD treatment with the OROS® delivery system, which means that one dose in
the morning, will lead to the release of medication into the body at an
increasing amount throughout the day.
Lately,
the now 18-year-old has been taking her medication less frequently and can
function without it, she says. However, for the first few years after her
diagnosis, there was a visible difference in her behavior between the days she
took her medicine and the days she did not.
“Me, I’m not as hyperactive as
some people,” Ann said. “Most of the time if I didn’t take [the medication] I’d
just be laying around all day and not have any motivation to do anything. I’d
constantly be falling asleep because I didn’t have anything to do today. I’d be
laying around on a Saturday when I’m off [work] and mom would be like ‘You
didn’t take your medicine today, did you?’”
Ann
doesn’t see her therapist anymore, but she does go in to see her psychiatrist
once a month to renew her prescription. She says that she has gone so many
times now, that she knows every question he will ask her each visit.
However,
in the past few weeks she hasn’t been taking her medication. She used to take it
almost every day, but she doesn’t notice a difference any more whether she
takes the medication or not.
“My symptoms don’t change every
day because it’s a constant thing, but [it’a matter of] me deciding how much I
want to work with it that day,” Ann said. “[Whether or not] I even take my
medicine every day that for me depends on what I’m doing that day, like if I
had to wake up early for school or work I’d take my medicine that day.”
I think I am already starting to
grow out of my ADHD,” Ann said. “I know the difference between what I
physically can’t do and when I’m just being lazy.”
While she may see a difference in
herself, what about other people that she interacts with daily?
Joy said that she does see a
difference in her at certain points in time. At the start of a semester or when
she puts her mind to it, she’ll apply herself to her schoolwork for about two
or three weeks, but then that motivation dies and she won’t make such an effort
anymore, Joy said.
“I think she thinks that she can’t
do it,” Joy said. “But she’s an extremely smart girl, she does great on tests, but
she needs to apply herself and realize she is capable of success. I know it;
she just has to believe it.”
The
experience and knowledge Ann has gained about ADHD over the years has helped
her to understand it in others as well.
“It made a huge difference when I started learning
about my ADHD,” Ann said. “I think it helped when I was tutoring [a 9-year-old
with ADHD] and I could recognize her symptoms so I know how to help her learn [the
material] more, instead of being annoyed with her and be like ‘just pay
attention.’ I could understand why she
wasn’t paying attention all the time and teach her some techniques that I have
learned.”
Ann will graduate from high
school in June, with plans to attend junior college in the fall.
Almost
a year after the difficult Memorial Day, Nicole and Ann text almost every day
and they plan to go shopping for Ann’s prom together.
“The trust is restored [in our
relationship],” Nicole said. “It took a long time and if you would have told me
we would be this close again in less than 12 months, I would never have believed
you, but we’ve made it this far.
“I
can honestly say that the thing I am most proud of is my relationship with my
sister and how far she has come to get her life on track.”
* Note—names
have been changed.
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