[dithl]

@jancave, what a great story, thank you for sharing!

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[dithl]

@Evelyn, take good care and don’t be afraid to go raise heck at the hospital if you aren’t getting better — and especially if you start feeling worse again. Your lungs are precious. Keep us posted!

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[dithl]

@kc5jck – your humour and cat photos. You can *always* add those :O) And thank you for your words.

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[dithl]

Wow. Thank you all so much for your support. If I don’t respond to each post, please know I have read all of them and appreciate all of you.

@blackdog, I know 🙂 You are really good at advice, don’t ever stop your instinct to “jump in”. @shutterbug55 – yes, so glad we have a couple of fuzzies around.

Right now the tough part is trying to figure out care…staying home is preferable, but home alone is probably not wise…and not knowing how long makes it hard to know whether to take leave now or wait.

@noreen – thanks, I didn’t know that before about grief and anxiety. I guess looking back at my previous paragraph, it makes total sense. So many unknowns.

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[dithl]

@jancave – cool new doc, that’s a great story. “I’m new here” will last as long as you want it to because a) there is a good chance you will forget you signed up, then come back in a half-year or so, then it will be new again (done that!). And b) there is a good chance that most of us will forget that you already said you were new. Just one of benefit of quirky ADD memory – so much is “new again”, every day :-). And as to the “incapable of love” – wow. Hopefully it will be funny some day. Because ya. Ridiculous.
@sdwa – “In my opinion, few people try harder than those with ADHD. We’re already operating at maximum capacity just to get through the day.”Yup.

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[dithl]

@blackdog: Good old Mother Nature provided two days filled with cardio activity. I have never used a garden hoe in the winter before — but it turned out to be a perfect tool to break up all the ice-encrusted snow out there. Now I have learned about a whole bunch of muscles I didn’t know I had — because they hurt! 😀

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[dithl]

Just did it! 3 1/2 laps around the playground across the street is 20 minutes. More interesting with the dog, there are so many things to sniff! (Her, not me).

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[dithl]

@sdwa, right on!

On Wednesday, I did it! (Angry snow shovelling).

What gets in my way is the “shoulds”. As in, I could go for a walk right now, but I should go and do some shopping.

Reading about other people’s success helps. So, here I go – going g to drag the dog out for a walk in the freezing rain or snow or whatever it is out there 🙂

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[dithl]

@sdwa, right on!

On Wednesday, I did it! (Angry snow shovelling).

What gets in my way is the “shoulds”. As in, I could go for a walk right now, but I should go and do some shopping.

Reading about other people’s success helps. So, here I go – going g to drag the dog out for a walk in the freezing rain or snow or whatever it is out there 🙂

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[dithl]

@cbp756, I commiserate. I don’t think I have changed to the degree you describe, but I do miss that “clarity of mind” I experienced when I first started Adderall. Sleep, too has changed. When I first started Adderall, I stopped dreaming. Which I kind of missed, because I have some pretty entertaining and strange dreams – but the quality of my sleep was so much better — waking up feeling refreshed for the first time in my memory.
Now, my dreams are back, along with usually feeling extremely groggy in the morning. I’m not much help, I’m afraid. I’m currently trying to sort out my own meds – lately they have been making me even groggier in the morning — that’s a new one for me. The doc said it’s a common response for people with ADHD.

@SDWA‘s suggestions are very good though.

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[dithl]

YAY! I love it! I abandoned my own thread but it’s not forgotten.

It is SO weird not having to be embarrassed that I “failed” this already. (I was supposed to have a plan in place a week and a half ago.) Could I have been more stereotypical?? Eureka to forgotten in the space of a day. Story of my life….

But you guys get it, so it’s NOT a “fail”. It’s a first attempt.

So — my plan:
I’ll add 1 walk a week. No other takers yet, so just me and maybe the dog. (And yes, we will both go “squirrel!!” – except her version is much more high pitched, loud and embarrassing). I’m not even going to commit to a certain day. But I will post it on here.

So @SDWA — you are so ON. You almost got me off the couch with your post…then I remembered I have wrapping to do. So you and Rick are in the lead…for now. 🙂

Reading everyone’s posts, so many obstacles that get in our way…

…what do you do to vaporize your own “obstacles to exercise”?

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[dithl]

Hey, blackdog, I gotta call you on this one. No offense taken, I just like to set the record straight. “Don’t rely on the teachers to catch it on their own. Most don’t care enough to notice. Keep checking with your daughter and making sure she’s ok. And make sure she knows that she is the better person and that it doesn’t matter what that bully says.” Actually, I would say most of us care a whole lot. I did research a few years ago, and found one statistic that was very telling: teachers notice only 1 in 25 of bullying incidents. It’s simply impossible to monitor every single interaction between students over the course of the day. I actually tell students this statistic. I tell them it’s impossible for teachers to see everything (because they think we do!), and explain that is why it is SO important for bystanders to speak up. (And I have to tell you how proud I was of one of my students this week when he came to me to tell me he had seen *another* student “stand up” because a friend was being hurt.) We teach our kindergartens to recognize when they are capable of handling a problem on their own and when they need to seek adult help.
I like your advice though, and I’m glad Pandora went in to help her daughter. It may be more than once, since some of us are better at recognizing and responding to issues than others….it helps to keep advocating to keep the issue at the forefront if it doesn’t stop.
I don’t know all the answers, it is such a complex issue. But probably the #1 stressor for me on the job would be the thought of failing to give the right help to a student who needed it. We want them to be happy – and they don’t learn well if they aren’t. I welcome information from parents, because sometimes children’s worries don’t come out til the end of the day when they have had time to process. When that kind of information is shared, I keep a closer eye on interactions between those particular students.
Sorry, that’s way too much info for an off the cuff remark. I’m just a born peacenik who wants everyone to get along 🙂

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[dithl]

ADD startle reflex. I swear I am getting jumpier the older I get. Last week I yelled out loud because a scene on TV spooked me. Today I startled twice (with sound effects, of course) just because someone wasn’t where I expected them to be….and was moving. Sheesh…the way things are going, I can already see the headlines: “80 year old woman dies after seeing a mouse”.

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[dithl]

Yep, it does tend to hinge on diagnosis/identification….which ironically can end up being a barrier to access. Tall girl, I hear you. It’s easy enough for me to tell you it’s potentially a good thing to delay graduation. But I imagine you want the thing bloody well over with, and I imagine I would feel the same in your shoes. I don’t know if this is helpful, but my brother-in-law failed his math course twice, got identified and accommodated, then got an A on that course. Now he is sailing through the next course. To me, that’s a really out there example of what can come out of proper accommodations. Not every experience is that dramatic!
What about LDAO? (Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario – http://www.ldao.ca). If you have a local chapter, they might be a good place to go for information/guidance in how to deal with college.
But after exams! Good luck, I will send some mathy / accounting good vibes your way this week:-)

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[dithl]

@tallgirl212 have you talked to your school’s disability services, or are you assuming you won’t be covered because you’re not full time?
My advice is to go in person to the student support / disability office and ask questions. Explain what’s been happening with your courses, and ask if they can help you get assessed (not only for ADHD, a full assessment would also uncover any learning disabilities you could be struggling against without knowing it).
It can be a long process, but if your college has a good student support office (many in Ontario do), you are in the best place to get assessed and start getting a handle on what would be a best fit for you at a workplace and what kind of accommodations, etc you would need.
In fact, I know it probably doesn’t feel like it, but an extra year or two would not be a waste of time if you get a proper assessment out of it. That investment in time now would pay itself off a thousand-fold if you use it to really delve into what’s going on with your brand of ADHD, if that’s what the diagnosis is.
Support through disabilty services and OSAP is still available if it’s deemed through the assessment process that you require a part-time course load in order to succeed.
Like blackdog said, take a deep breath. You have just found out that what you thought was a short race (2 year program) is in fact a marathon. Extremely frustrating for ADDers, but if you can treat it like a marathon, you can do it!
Good luck, and keep in touch on here. You have an ADD army behind you now 🙂

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