I love psychiatry for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I had the previledge of sitting throgh lectures by two darlings; Prof Atwoli and Prof Gakinya. Both professors have a wonderful teaching method. They give real world scenarios and leave you to figure out the rest of the details. They paint the bigger picture and leave you to fish for the details from whichever 'pond' you so wish. Beyond the lecture room each has unique qualities. Prof Atwoli is a decent chess player and a brilliant writer with a CV the size of John's Chest. Prof Gakinya on the other hand is a man with a golden heart. Secondly, this is where I got a better understanding of myself.

Today I will tell you how I knew I had ADHD. It was through a patient we saw at the psychiatric clinic with Prof Gakinya.

In medical school we do a salad of courses. From First year to third year we do theory courses. These are termed basic sciences and they set the foundation for clinical rotations that happen for the rest of the duration in medical school. That is from fourth year to sixth year.

During the psychiatric rotation we had the pleasure of seeing a kid with ADHD with the good professor. As usual he asked us to observe the kid for sometime and come up with a diagnosis. The kid was all over the place; checking out our stethoscopes, perusing through our books, asking a million questions, climbing onto desks and a myriad of other activities. His classteacher had recommended a psychiatric review because the kid was mischevious, never seemed to ever pay attention in class, was never on time and almost always never completed his assignments. His school bag had several dog eared books with jumbled up books. It was not easy to make head or tail of the notes the kid had made.

We were still green if the field of psychiatry and it came as no surprise that each of one of us avoided eye contact with the prof when the time came for us to diagnose the kid. The prof made the diagnosis and went on to describe similar cases of ADHD he had come across in his practice.

This was a deja vu moment for me. I saw myself in that kid. Always late for school, dishevelled, disorganized, absent minded, hyperactive and a myriad of other traits. I took special interest in the subject and did extensive research. I definitely had ADHD that had been undiagnosed till I was in my twenities. My childhood now made sense.

to be continued...