One thing that affected my getting diagnosed with ADHD was perimenopause/menopause. In 2018, I had a partial hysterectomy that occurred just before I would have naturally gone into menopause, according to my Ob-gyn.
She noted my hot flashes, my age of 48, and some other symptoms I was having as ways to indicate to her that I was ‘almost there’. I had a partial hysterectomy, so I would not be sent into full on menopause based on the surgery, but would soon be fully into menopause based on my symptoms.
My adhd symptoms definitely got worse during perimenopause. Some of the coping skills I had used previously just didn’t work anymore once I began experiencing perimenopause symptoms.
It was difficult for me to identify what was causing my distress, as I also had known since 2016 that we would be moving to Texas from Indiana. My husband had accepted a promotion, and we had agreed that we would ‘probably’ move to Texas as long as the job went well.
He had a lot of success in that role right off the bat, and also absolutely hates to be cold.
He started campaigning to move to Texas almost immediately, but I wasn’t ready yet. Our kids were in college at Indiana University, and I wanted to stay close to them while they were in school. I was also very uncertain about moving away from my friends and family.
We ended up moving a year earlier than we had planned due to several circumstances, including that they both had internships the summer of 2019 which would take them away from home anyway. Also, my husband traveling every other week for 3.5 years was very difficult for both of us.
So I had the very real stress of an impending move away from the state I had grown up in, the stress of being an empty nester, my husband traveling every other week for work, and perimenopause symptoms.
I also had a very busy, stressful job that I loved initially but became harder once I knew we would be moving.
So…you can see where the difficulties were with identifying how my ADHD might also be affecting me.
ADHD and (Peri) Menopause
For many woman, the coping skills that work for them all along are no longer as effective once they are in perimenopause/menopause.
With the change in hormones, coping skills that had been effective just no longer work. Many women begin to notice this in perimenopause as their hormones start shifting from what they had been.
For many women, they then seek help.
This was the case for me. As I mentioned above, I had been in a high stress situation prior to moving to Texas. Once we got here, we began to settle in. Then, in March of 2020, COVID hit.
COVID was difficult for me. I had just begun working in the group practice where I still work, and was just beginning to get a caseload. On March 6th, I was diagnosed with the flu. I missed a week of work due to having a fever and a cough, that eventually turned into pneumonia. As COVID was shutting the world down, I was seeking medical help for the pneumonia that my sister, a pediatrician, had diagnosed over the phone.
‘You have a wet cough. That’s pneumonia. You need a z-pack’. A z-pack is an antibiotic that I then requested from my primary health provider, who prescribed it without asking me to come in. The z-pack worked for me, and my pneumonia symptoms began to go away.
It is my opinion that not only did I have the flu, but that I also had COVID at that time. I will never know for sure, as I wasn’t tested, but 2 years later when I tested positive for COVID I was barely sick at all.
So we had the shutdown of COVID, I was sick to the point that I asked my parents to stay home (they had been planning a visit with us prior to knowing the world was going to shut down), and my social self was struggling.
Fast forward to April 10th, which was Good Friday. I had seen clients that day, and went to my friend’s house for a bike ride. She was my friend from Indiana, and we lived very close to each other. I went to her house and we began to ride toward a path she wanted to show me.
As I tried to double back to the path she was showing me, I tipped my bike over and felt my ankle squish. I knew immediately that I was injured, and did not allow the people who offered to help me stand up due to COVID fears.
You see, this was the beginning of COVID where people were starting to walk outside more, and it was a beautiful afternoon in April. At 5:30, when I fell, the streets filled up with people enjoying the weather and the spring weekend.
My medical care wasn’t great, and 2 months later in June my foot was diagnosed as broken, in addition to the high ankle sprain I was initially diagnosed with.
During the time I was working to feel better (with an undiagnosed broken foot), my mental health continued to struggle.
In late April, I sought care from a psychiatrist and underwent a brain scan, which was something that practice did to help with diagnoses. I was diagnosed on May 7th, which happened to also be the day my family was participating in a ‘happy graduation’ zoom call for my sons graduating from college.
Although I had been called ADHD by friends and family for many years, the idea of taking meds for it had never really occurred to me. I am now one of the many women who got their ADHD diagnosis later in life.
It was life changing for me.
