MY PERSONAL HISTORY AND HOW IT AFFECTS ME AND MY CF
Personal
Having done my research, I’ve found I’ve been “masking” so much of who I was when I was little. Some people feel pity knowing I wasn’t able to express myself but personally I feel I’ve been masking that long I don’t really remember who I am when I’m not masking. I don’t feel this is a problem per say and I’m often very introspective and knowing about ADHD has given me not just another perspective, but has given me a much larger piece of the puzzle that I call me.
So, let’s start with where ADHD is often identified. In my case I knew the education system failed me a lot, but I still managed. Although with only passing grades. It seemed to be quite common with not just me but a lot of late diagnosed neurodivergent people I work with. Again I’m not alone with wondering how much further I would be if we were diagnosed and supported sooner. If we could have been given our “Tool kit” sooner. And while I can seem thick at times when taking the official MENSA genius mock test (just to stress this isn’t your typical viral quiz or mobile game advert) I was estimated to have an IQ of around 144.1
In all my time in education they knew something was a-miss, In college I felt a bit ashamed of my results2 so I asked for tutoring for my English. But being in a more relaxed setting I scored pretty high on all my mock tests, spelling quizzes etc, so I was mis-diagnosed as having test anxiety.3
My earliest school memories of school where at my first primary school. I was usually pretty average; I didn’t remember presenting any symptoms that I showed around the same age outside of school. Mostly just talking out of time or talking relentlessly and mainly my restless legs.
I did notice was in English I was on the “thick table” 4. In my primary school Harry Potter was a huge and our tables were correlated with the four Hogwarts houses. My smarter and gifted friends were put into Slytherin and Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff was pretty normal, and Gryffindor was where I found myself sat with the kids still on reading stages in year 4 and 55 I knew I didn’t belong on the table as I seemed a lot further on, but when I would question it I couldn’t get an answer. I held my pen strangely, and still do, but my handwriting wasn’t horrible. At worse my handwriting would tend to mix cursive with “erm not joined up”, but I would test low.
This continued after I moved schools, but my ADHD actually came at an advantage. In this new school they were studying The Beatles in history. My dad’s music trivia is amazing and he would love to teach me fun facts, cool stories etc on various bands we would listen to; he is also a massive Beatles fan. By that time in school, I knew just as much as he did on the Beatles6. So, when I had a meeting with my teacher who would become my form tutor and history teacher, I instantly impressed him. He pointed me out in my music lesson and they were very impressed with my ability to hear pitch, single out instruments in an orchestra etc, so I was placed in their gifted and talented program and was asked to attend piano lessons. I was pretty good and got a few grades, but I was taken off gifted and talented for not attending lessons7
Despite this I still had to attend easter holiday school for English to help me with the upcoming SATs. Also, to note I had a couple of pretty big surgeries in primary school including placing my first portacath, attending the GP numerous times with intense belly ache to be told it’s just a belly ache as it turns out it was appendicitis.8
Then to make matters worse after achieving a actually pretty high scores in my SATs when I moved to secondary school, they lost my results and they had to place me in whatever classes they had room in. This resulted in me being in set 3 (The average level) but they only had room in remedial English class. I did ask if it was about my English test scores, but it was genuinely the only class that had room for another student. The teacher campaigned for me to be put in a different class but that only happened after I finished year 8. At the end of year 7 we the end of years test and in science (a subject I really enjoyed reading on outside of school) I got a near perfect score… technically.9 So yet again I was put in gifted and took trombone lessons at dinner… I highly doubt I could play a lick on either piano or trombone now a days.
In year 9 I was finally moved to set 3 in English. I loved it I showed I had a strong understanding of things like subtext, patterns in langue etc so things like dickens and Shakespeare were easy. But even now, I had to attend extra English lessons in the holidays. In the run up to my GCSEs I took the English NVQ to see ensure if I failed my GCSE, I would still have a passing grade.10 I again had some pretty serous surgeries in year 10 and 11 that affected some of my other results. The day came to get my results and I had got all passing grades. All high C’s and a B. I was called in to the office for my NVQ test score and it came back as a fail. I thought shit I thought I breezed that, the invigilator told me that there were 5 other students that took the test, and one was called Ryan Stephens. She saw my answers and was certain I just got the wrong Ryans results. I was told to come back to help take it to the examiners and get my actual score, but I had already decided to retry my GCSE in College, so I left it.
Today I found that my issues are all common symptoms of ADHD.