I did fine in school although I think I listened to my teacher about never–I spent a good deal of my time decorating my monthly calendar and sketching what I was going to wear to the next formal. I mean, a girl has to have priorities, right? To the annoyance of many of my classmates, I had good grades, so I never really noticed my extremely distractability.

In college however, it was brought to my attention that I am literally incapable of sitting through a movie without either a running dialogue or a magazine. I can remember at least one occasion where I was banished to another room during movie time.

I’ve never sought to medicate myself for it or anything. I CAN keep quiet although I’ll probably have a notepad full of doodles at the end of a meeting. Truth be told, I’m fine having a brain that’s always looking for the next thing. The only real problem it gives me is insomnia–there are nights when I just can’t shut my brain off–but I suspect that if exercised a little more regularly that even that wouldn’t be as much of a problem.

So where was I going with this?

Oh yeah. When you have a brain like mine, there’s an endless list of things that flit in and out and sometimes it takes a while before you grab hold of one of them and really start chasing it down.

But lately I seemed to have grabbed hold of something and I can’t seem to let it go.

A couple of weeks ago we went to have dinner with a college buddy of mine and my husband’s. He’s fully aware of Charlie’s issues, but we don’t see him that often, so when we sat down I gave him a quick appraisal of the situation and this is what I said, “think of Charlie as someone whose had a little too much to drink–he knows what going on but it might take him a little time to act on it.” At which point my husband muttered, “well, he is on Phenobarb.”

I kid you not, it was like someone had slapped me in the face.

I mean he IS on Phenobarb. And he does often have a sleepy expression on his face. And I’ve been blaming it on low tone this entire time, but what if it isn’t low tone? I’ve never known Charlie not on Phenobarb. I’ve heard other parents describe their children as lethargic and sleepy on Phenobarb and yet I never felt it was having that effect on Charlie. But really, I have no idea.

So now that thought is racing through my brain and I’m trying to sort out how I feel. I KNOW that Charlie has abnormal brain waves and while abnormal brain waves put you at a risk for seizures, there’s no guarantee that a person will actually have seizures. And even if he did have seizures, would they be big, bad, scary grand mals or would they be petit mals? or partial seizures? Are there other drug possibilities? My ADD brain is combustible with questions. And while there are other parents who have traveled this road or who are traveling it now, I still don’t know what the effect would be on my child and it’s not a decision I really want to get wrong.

So here I sit and I’m fairly certain my poor neurologist is going to get a visit and a list of questions, but man is that thought scary. It’s never easy to rock the boat, but maybe this time it’s worth it.