I need to know

This is a big week for me. A near lifetime of fidgeting, making endless shapes with my feet and hands which always have to be equal on both the left and the right, a complete inability to learn and then retain information, all with a brain that never seems to slow down and the reason why could be within touching distance. Finally, I’m having my ADHD assessment.

It could be me but I sense that ADHD is the new condition of our age. All manner of famous folk, plus Adrian Chiles, are being diagnosed with ADHD and people might think I’ve merely joined a bandwagon. The impressionist Rory Bremner describes his ADHD as “my best friend and my worst enemy”. I can assure you that mine is no friend.

I always knew there was something wrong, something a bit different about me. I felt I was reasonably intelligent, but I am also hopelessly disorganised. At school and at work, I somehow got by, although I don’t know how. at school, I never understood any of the subjects, except English, and even that was despite never knowing the difference between an adjective and a verb. At work, I somehow got by, thanks often to the efforts and tolerance of others, despite my many failings. But when I was a kid, I was “easily distracted”. I was once described, most memorably, as having a “butterfly mind”. Some comments, like those of a woodwork teacher who hated my guts for not being able to remember anything he taught me. Conditions like ADHD didn’t exist back then. You were either stupid or disruptive or, in my case, both.

My lightbulb moment came maybe five years ago when I suffered a mental breakdown, which came about as a direct result of the bullies and abusers at the British Red Cross for whom I had the misfortune to work. At one stage, I was sent to their occupational health officer who told me straight that I was “emotionally weak”. If I wasn’t a basket case before that day, I was after. As ever, I sought refuge in years of therapy and one after another the latest therapist would ask the question: “Have you ever been assessed for ADHD?” Having literally no idea what ADHD was, at first I just nodded and moved on. But I kept coming back to it. I searched the internet and read books on ADHD and eventually took numerous tests, each one came back to suggest that I had “severe ADHD”.

I then spoke to GPs and a family member who is a psychiatrist. The family member can’t assess or treat me due to obvious ethical reasons, but their view that ADHD was a certainty in my case, and it was likely there were other conditions at work, like bipolar, PTSD and autism. I then did various tests and they all appeared to back that up. So, my GP recommended me for an NHS assessment. It took a year to get on the waiting list and now I have been informed that the waiting list is six years. So from the point of referral, I could be waiting for seven years. It was at this point I decided to abandon my principles and go private.

Even the private assessment has been five months in the waiting, far longer than it would have been on the NHS under the last Labour government which was voted out in 2010. But on Tuesday, it’s finally here.I should be able to find out whether I have a life-altering condition or I am simply thick. In my mind, it comes down to that, although I am confident to the point of wild overconfidence that I know which was this is going to go.

I have thought it through. I know that this condition has had a detrimental effect on me and on those around me. I believe that it held me back at school and throughout my professional life. Combined with my clinical depression, I suppose it is a wonder I have made it this far. But for all that, I need to know. Sometime on Tuesday morning, at last I shall.