Another personal update

Hey everyone. So, first things first, I skipped another weekly update last week - for the time being, if I don't really have anything to update about, I'm going to try and let myself do that occasionally without feeling terribly guilty about it. I didn't have anything real to update on last week, but this week there's been a lot; I also didn't post the update on Saturday because I was in the middle of having back to back to back appointments at the time, and I needed a bit of a mental break to get my thoughts together before typing all of this up.

It's all personal stuff, before I get any farther; these past two weeks have been rough, and I didn't get any work done, but I think I'll be able to soon thanks to some things I'll get into during this post. I don't remember exactly what I said in last week's update, so forgive me if I talk about things I've already talked about.

I'm very happy to say that I've finally been assigned a therapist, and I have weekly appointments scheduled with them through the end of June - with the one exception that I don't have any appointment this week, because he didn't have any openings. I was hoping to schedule even further ahead than that, but they're only doing 3 months at the moment because of how crazy busy things are, so I'll just have to regularly schedule more appointments to make sure his schedule doesn't fill up.

I did have my introductory appointment with him a few days ago, and it went well. He also has ADHD, and has gone through a lot of the struggles I have; only time will tell, but in general I have very positive feelings about our first appointment and I think he's going to be a good choice for me. That being said, apparently I've got a lot more to unpack than I thought. The first appointment with a new patient is supposed to last about an hour; mine lasted twice that, I still only got to touch on like half of the things I want to work through, and by the end of it, my therapist referred to me as a "target-rich environment" in regards to how many different subjects we have to tackle and work through.. which is honestly the funniest thing anyone has ever said about me lmao. It's honestly pretty validating, though, to hear an unbiased 3rd party say that I have a lot going on/a lot to deal with. I've often felt like I get overwhelmed too easily, and that a "normal" person would be able to deal with the stress I have without getting mentally wrecked like I do, but especially after hearing him say that, I'm trying to convince my brain to stop seeing it like that.

So that's by far the biggest thing that happened this week, but it wasn't the only thing. I finished my 2 weeks with the heart monitor my cardiologist set me up with, and on the same day I was returning it, I also had an echocardiogram done. It's only been a few days since then, so I haven't gotten any results back yet, but I'll hear back from them whenever they have something to tell me. I also decided to stop taking the ADHD medication that my medicine doctor prescribed me, after talking it over with her. It had been over a month of taking it, many of my negative symptoms were still there, and I wasn't seeing any positive effects yet. Technically it can take up to 8 weeks for full effect, but now that I've been off it for a bit, I'm glad I made the decision. I'm not at 100% or anything, but my mood has definitely been improving since I stopped, so I think it really wasn't agreeing with me. I don't have another appointment with my medicine doc until late March, since her schedule has been full (sensing a pattern there), so it'll be a bit before I can talk to her about where we go from here. I'm guessing we're going to be stepping away from ADHD medication for a bit and focusing on my other problems like anxiety, but it'll probably depend on what my cardiologist results are, as well as what my therapist and I are working on. Since my mood has been better, and due to some of the things my therapist and I talked about, I'm going to try and get a bit of work done this week - nothing huge, but something to get the ball rolling. Hopefully I'll have at least a bit of development update to share next week; if nothing else, I'll try to share some of what Orexius has been working on.

This is a smaller thing, but the last update I have for the day; in addition to the therapy, I'm also going to be doing some more formal neuropsychological testing, both to get a more concrete ADHD diagnosis and to see if I have anything else going on, and to what degree. My therapist said he's beyond confident the ADHD diagnosis will come back positive, considering I check off basically every symptom on the list, but the test could help in understanding just how severe my ADHD is, how severe my anxiety and depression are, and if there are any other mental issues I have going on then it should help identify those too. From what I can tell, it's basically going to be a full school day lmao. I go in early in the morning and I'll be there for about 7 hours, including an hour lunch break. Not looking forward to that, especially since I'm used to waking up at around noon; that appointment won't be until the 18th, though, so I have some time to try and adjust my schedule a bit. I probably won't hear anything about that until late March, but I'll update you guys on the results as soon as I have them.

And that's about it for me today. Thanks for being so overwhelmingly patient and understanding, everybody, it really does help knowing that I have the space and time I need to process things and try to improve, without fear of being broke or homeless. There's been SO much going on for me this past year, a lot of things that are years if not a decade+ in the making. It's been a really rough road, but while we may be the ones making the game, none of us would be here without you, and I definitely wouldn't be able to seek help for any of these things without your support. Hope you all had a good weekend, and I'll see you again next update.