Well, I'm off this morning for my ADD evaluation. I'm feeling anxious -- anxious that the dr. will tell me I have ADD and anxious that he will tell me I do not have ADD. Also, I read online that lengthy evals like mine will be (3 hrs) typically include IQ testing. I've no idea what my IQ is and I'm not sure I want to know.
After that I'm off to an appointment with my C. Today it's all about me.
mrscac, Don't sweat the tests...we all know what a gem you are. And as far as the iq test, I am lobbying for extra points if you have little kids, are peri/postmenopausal, and have relationship stress of any kind!
Well, I'm off this morning for my ADD evaluation. I'm feeling anxious -- anxious that the dr. will tell me I have ADD and anxious that he will tell me I do not have ADD. Also, I read online that lengthy evals like mine will be (3 hrs) typically include IQ testing. I've no idea what my IQ is and I'm not sure I want to know.
After that I'm off to an appointment with my C. Today it's all about me.
Thanks to all for your thoughtful posts.
Good luck, as in an accurate diagnosis and treatment that makes a real impact in your life.
The only evaluation I got was the doctor listening to my personal history and saying that I definitely had it. Either he's not as thorough as he should be or I've got an unambiguous and severe case.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
I am VERY glad I went through this evaluation. I do meet the criteria for ADD. We did talk about the meds available, although I'm not interested in pursuing that right now.
The dr. is an ADD test specialist, recommended by my C.
The dr. told me that research shows that attention deficits are caused either by diminished dopamine in the frontal lobe of the brain or by the dopamine receptor closing too quickly. Dopamine enhances attention. Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta work by keeping the dopamine receptors open longer than they would be otherwise.
This dopamine problem causes deficiencies in working memory, "the ability to hold several facts or thoughts in memory temporarily while solving a problem or performing a task." I read an example online of someone being lost, stopping at a gas station, asking for directions and then listening to 3 or 4 sentences describing how to get to a destination. This is exactly what throws me. This is why cac and I have gotten into arguments when he is trying to explain, verbally, something technical to me. During one part of the test the dr. read a short paragraph consisting of 4 or 5 sentences. At the end he asked me to recall the paragraph. I was only able to recall part of the first sentence and a couple more key words. We repeated this process 5 times. This is the kind of thing that has plagued me and made me feel stupid over the years.
I also found out that I have deficiencies in information retrieval, which I knew, and in particular with free recall, where no clues are given to assist information retrieval. An example of this was when I was asked to recite as many words as I could that start with the letter F. This type of exercise is quite difficult for me, and frustrating too. So many times I have started to recall for cac something I had read and I can only remember some key words but nothing substantive and I get frustrated and give up. Often I pull out the article and read word for word the information I wanted to tell him. The web is invaluable to me! It helped me write this post.
I am very happy with my IQ score. Shocked, actually.
I will receive a detailed report from the doctor in a couple of weeks.
I feel a lot better about myself after going through this process. I finally have some answers!
MrsCac this is very interesting to me as I am suspicious I may be ADD too. I am virtually certain my D6 is and that is what got me to thinking I might be, and my mum definitely manifested symptoms too. I've been playing a little memory game with my kids lately and D6 is completely hopeless at it. I turn cards over with words on them, the kids have to try to recall as many as they can. She gets about 2 or 3 out of 10. However she can read extremely well for her age. If we play the classic memory game with the paired picture cards laid face down she's very good at it.
I think I would score pretty well on the tests you describe, so that's kind of weird. I know I am very strongly right-brained and have a problem processing information in a linear fashion. If someone is giving me directions I have to re-process them into a spatial form. If someone says it's the second on the left, then 100 yds down and first right, down the hill and then cross over the round about and it's the first left - I am mentally drawing a picture so I don't have to remember all those words. If someone asks me directions I point and gesture alot and I tell them something like - you get on the road parallel to this one and when you see XXX landmark you head for the right side of it. Once you pass YYY landmark it's about 100 yds on the left. If someone asks directions to the bathroom in my house I say something like - it's directly above the kitchen. When I was young I had virtually photographic recall which was lucky because I didn't have to process anything (like lists of vocabulary) in a linear way I just took a snapshot in my head and when it came to the test I could pull the page up in front of me. Unfortunately that trick disappeared round about puberty.
I've read that ADD can also be masked by high IQ, when you're at school and the teacher is repeating stuff over for the slow ones you can afford to switch off or you can just figure it out on the fly so the ADD doesn't notice so much. So it's great to hear that you got a high IQ score and that might well explain why your ADD went unnoticed for so long. Have you read anything about ADD and peri-menopause/menopause? There's evidence that people on ADD meds find when menopause hits the drugs stop working so well. In my own case I believe the ADD symptoms have been covered by high functioning right brain activity and high IQ are now rearing their ugly heads with menopause approaching.
The main clue for me is that I need a dopamine rush in order to concentrate. I like to work in very busy environments with a lot of pressure, I like it when the phone is ringing off the hook, deadlines are coming thick and fast etc, THEN I can concentrate. If things are too quiet and orderly I switch off and nothing gets done.
I think if ADD had been better understood in her day my mum would have had a better time of it. She got pretty depressed about her lack of ability to achieve anything and major disorganisation as a housewife. She was a very intelligent woman and underachieving to her potential was a big blow to her self-esteem. She was a very sociable person but hated to invite friends over because she always felt embarrassed by the state of the house, as a result of which her social life tended to be a bit lack-lustre. I'm walking in her shoes, but I just shrug about the state of the house and invite people anyway, because I reckon if people care whether there are piles of clutter all over my house then they're not much use as friends anyway. When the kids were babies I used to get them dressed as quick as I could and leave the house, that way the state of the place could get no worse and it wasn't preying on my mind the whole day. I frankly think I'd be better off living in a trailer where there's less to do by way of housework - or maybe just a tent.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
I'm not sure about the explosion in ADD diagnoses. In some ways it is just the typical modern reaction to being overwhelmed (give me a pill). Don't get me wrong, there are certainly people who need help but a lot of these ADD specialists see ADD everywhere and the treatment is reinforcing it.
Case in point. I talked to someone because I was falling behind at work who recommended a specialist. They gave me a prescription. Guess what? I got more work done. Of course I did. I was on speed. Baseball players take it to work harder. Is it because they are all ADD or is it that it simply makes you concentrate harder and apply yourself more? It did improve my work so the specialist now assumes that I have ADD since the ADD treatment helped my "problem". Now, in my way of thinking, most everyone's work output would improve on amphetamines. That's why it is called speed.
My conspiratorial mind also notes that the medicine would cost over $500.00 a month if I didn't have a prescription plan. Someone is making a killing on the increased diagnoses of ADD.
Gone the carvings and those who left their mark. Gone the kings and queens, now only the rats hold sway.
Someone is making a killing on the increased diagnoses of ADD.
Not just ADD, all problems today seem to be solved with a pill. It's almost an epidemic. And yep, the pharmaceutical companies are making a killing. I've worked in the mental health field and have seen first hand how the doctors are influences to presribe certain meds. It's a total racket if you ask me. Sorry for my rant. Don't mean to discount anything about your treatment mrscac. I truly hope it works for you. My H was on an AD before he left and he truly thinks it played a role in his poor choices. He said "At least when I was depressed I had a certain level of anxiety that was fairly realistic. With the AD's, it wiped out any anxiety and made me feel like nothing I did would cause stress." So he left is the haze of AD's that made him feel somewhat invincible in a way. And not in a good way. I also think this may explain some of the higher rates of suicide among people on certain AD's. The normal anxieties of life that can protect us in some ways are removed and you get this "I just don't care anymore" attitude. I saw that happen first hand to H. He went off them and is so much better today. I've never been on them myself and don't think I would ever try them. But that's me. I know they have really helped other people. You really need to research what you are taking though.
ADD manifests differently in different people. I have always had those memory problems and my mother has the same issues. My reading comprehension has always been poor. Based on my IQ score, I should have scored about 200 points higher than I did on the verbal portion of the SAT, for example. He found a huge disparity between what I could remember and what I should have been able to remember based on IQ.
I don't have high distractibility, which is common with ADD.
I would do very poorly on the word memory game too and probably much better with the pictures. I've never had a photographic memory.
Here's one part of the testing that was wierd. One of the tests involved him reading numbers to me at what seemed to be a fairly slow pace, maybe with a 1 second pause in between numbers. He started with pairs of numbers, then sets of 3, sets of 4, all the way to sets of 8. Bizarrely, I recited back every set correctly. It was difficult, but somehow I was able to keep track of all the numbers. He said I'm the only one he's ever tested who got them all, and he's tested thousands of people. Then he did it all over again with new sets of numbers, and I had to recite those backwards. I got almost all of those, too. My brain must process numbers differently than words.
This was quite a battery of tests that left me mentally exhausted because I was trying so hard to focus. Some tests were timed; some were not.
Your description of the pictures in your head is interesting. I'm not sure that I do that, but I am quite visual. I hate reading directions to assemble things, but if I've got very detailed diagrams, I do very well, for example, with those Playmobil toys. The words totally trip me up. When the dr. started reading the first paragraph to me I felt that exact same panicky feeling as when I'm trying to listen to cac when he's talking about a technical topic. I'm still trying to commit that first sentence to memory and he's finished with the second one and on to the third. So at that point my brain starts to shut down and I get only a few key words.
I also had read that IQ can mask ADD, which I believe is exactly what happened with me. I did solid college prep work and was no trouble to anyone. I was quiet, I took good notes, and I did what I was supposed to do. I was the classic good girl. I tested well enough and I was a good writer. And today, girls like me are still falling through the cracks because unlike their ADHD counterparts, they're quiet and they don't attract attention.
College wasn't overly difficult for me because I picked a major based on my strengths (music). My experience would have been completely different had I decided to major in math!
Bottom line is that I was not able to reach my full potential because of this deficiency. That makes me feel sad because of all the years I beat myself up, but it also makes me feel hopeful, as I look forward.
I'm sure that peri/menopause is already playing a role. I had a lot of memory issues when I was pregnant, too. I need to read up on it.
You know, maybe I needed the dopamine rush too. I always functioned better at work when I had a few things going. I remember part time jobs where I was bored to tears because of the pace. I have a long history of tardiness, and I always sensed that I got a rush from rushing to finish something or get somewhere. However, I do have a tendency to get overwhelmed too, so it depends on the stimulation.
Interesting comments about your mom. One of the reasons that ADD is so difficult for women is because they are usually responsible for managing things like the household, the children's activities, even their bosses schedules and so forth, if they are secretaries. Men with ADD are more likely to have these things taken care of by someone else.
Your mom sounds exactly like me regarding the house. My house is often messy and disorderly, but I know how I would LIKE it be. I truly wish I could just shrug it off. When we belonged to a playgroup, I managed to have the group over a few times out of obligation, really, but I truly dreaded it, and felt a huge sense of relief when they left. Entertaining people in my home is very draining for me, even though I'm sociable enough (for an introvert) and enjoy visiting other people, attending parties, etc.
Hmm, most of these tests sound to be very similar to tests for dyslexia, which also manifests itself in many ways. Dyslexia can also be masked by high IQ, and is often accompanied by a high IQ.
--BBG, uh no GGB, who had the hardest time with lower case b,d,p,q and g in school, does much better with visual and spatial representations, memorizes number patterns easily but not word associations, etc. Mine is a relatviley minor dyslexia.
Unfortunately that trick disappeared round about puberty.
Then he did it all over again with new sets of numbers, and I had to recite those backwards. I got almost all of those, too. My brain must process numbers differently than words.