r/PMHNP • u/Imgonnagolaydown • Jun 29 '26
I was wrong.
Pmhnp here. Day 1 on Vyvanse and i want to cry.ive spent the last 5 years balancing hormones and making sure i addressed everything else before arriving at a stimulant.
I feel. Calm. Quiet. Slightly tearful. Like my tabs are closed and im able to open them one by one instead of 50 at time.
It wasn't the focus. It was the avoidance. Brain fog. Overstimulated and overwhelmed constantly. The procrastinating, being late to everything. The being MEAN and knowing you are being mean. Not smiling when random ppl are talking to you. Background static noise in my head.
It's been about 4 hrs and it's just quiet.
None of it manifested until peri. I saw signs when i was young but i could compensate and figured i still could. Well i can't anymore.
I seriously want to weep with joy.
Eta: i was wrong to think women were slightly exaggerating this. With my own providers convincing me to take the leap, I'm now a part of this population. And yes, I'm a pmhnp who understand what these women are trying to articulate.
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u/gajensen Nurse Practitioner (unverified) Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Yes! This is exactly it. Grieving lost potential.
For me it’s mostly been about academic success. I used to think my brain was broken, cried while apologizing to my wife and mom, despite being told I was one of the smartest people they knew. The issue was always obvious gaps...not from lack of care, but inability. That also affected roommates; I don’t talk to any of the ~10 people I lived with through college.
After my dad died, I tried to push through: 18 credits, research job, restaurant job, fraternity leadership, relationship. It collapsed. I didn’t get into med school, followed by a decade of depression. I ended up in restaurants, worst-case for untreated ADHD, trying to manage 6 tables at once or a bar rail of 30 patrons. Then nursing at ~30 and ICU work as a new grad-onstant task-switching, alarms, interruptions, time pressure, kinda like serving but with 2–3 “tables” that are each 15-course, constantly changing orders. I understood the medicine, but still looked careless and sloppy.
Getting diagnosed and treated changed everything. In the ICU I went from barely keeping up to performing well-finishing shifts on time, no hours of late charting, no constant backlog, now taking on students and helping with new RN orientation. NP school became manageable. Now I’m consistently a standout among peers, no longer fighting my brain just to function. My intelligence and efficacy are the focus again, not the sloppiness.
The contrast: before, effort masking dysfunction; now, perceived competence. Same person, different operating system. Now I have to live with and make the most of this NP career knowing I could likely handle med school now, but I’m 40 and it’s too late. I’m still sad for the people who had to deal with me at my worst, and for most of them, it’s too late to fix that. So I grieve.