Posted by SuperADDMom on July 5, 2010
So planning things is helping me not have so much anxiety.
becoming more aware of my high anxiety times is helping me avoid total add/aspie meltdowns.
all my life I’ve been a sort of “fly by the seat of my pants and see where I land and deal” kind of person.I think one of the reasons I avoided it like the plague is because I fear needing to be very rigid and have strict planning to function. it’s almost like dealing with the chaos feeds my ADHD need for stimulation, and my aspie side of me is cringing, and having anxiety the whole time.
So planning things, and using a day planner/to do list has not been natural to me, nor has it it been easy to start as a habit.
I’ve finally come to some habits that are making things easier for me, though if I get interrupted/sidetracked in my routines, I forget things lose things etc.
Slowly I’m trying to fix the mess I’ve made of this place since our move and my mental burnout. Your looking at someone who has taken 11 years to remember hubby needs his bread toasted to be able to eat it ( oral sensory issues)
So, I have a day planner I write a week out in, in an overall plan, and then each day of the week after the general plan I write out info that is important as those days come, like who I called, recipes, my master to do list for the week, and next steps in those projects .. really it’s just a composition book, with blank pages, so I have no worries of needing to remain neat, or confined to a certain amount of space. it IS my brain it holds everything.
and I have a calendar I write out meals on for a week or more to have a plan.
On Sundays I plan the weeks meals ( generally, sometimes they change)
This week, my menu plans are
Chicken taco crockpot w/home made Naan bread
Salmon Croquettes w/dill sauce
beef crock pot & gravy w/mashed potato
Veggie Lasagna
Pizza
Crock Pot Pork with orange and Videlia onions & rosemary rice.
Posted by SuperADDMom on May 26, 2010
doing paper work…i hate paper work
the amount of paper work that it takes to get things from our disability support is a full time job in an of itself. they changed the way you file for gas for medical travel.
It’s a TOTAL pain in the ass. they are cutting me short for mileage to my ADHD dr appointments, using google maps and having me travel on back dirt ( bog) pot hole infested unmaintained roads to shorten the distance, that are not even plowed in the winter and are considered snowmobile trails in the winter.
I don’t travel those roads, so they are cutting me short on klm per trip of the crappy 18 cents a klm to travel it… the trip is 137 klm round trip. it minimal, but it’s the point, they try to cut corners every chance they get.
Last year they took away the back to school clothing allowance for children, and the winter clothing allowance for children.
the 18 cents per klm doesn’t even cover the actual gas we use to go there and back. ( lets not even factor in maintenance and wear and tear on our vehicle, and the fact that we are too rural to take a bus, or taxi cab.)
and now for every trip I take BESIDES that appointment for medical travel, I have to fill out a medical cost form, submit gas, parking receipts for THAT day. We live rural, so we don’t buy gas ON THE DAY, we buy gas and fill up for multiple trips, and try to do so when gas prices are lower, since they go up and down more than a cheap hooker on Jarvis Street ( local Toronto ref sorry)
So, I just KNOW that when I submit one gas receipt for two seperate trips, because it was a 40 dollar gas purchase we made knowing we had multipul medical trips coming up, it’s going to confuse the morons that seem to work in our local office.
Once The Mundane One had to step by step, with a calculator, talk the worker for disability through a math calculation, because they were trying to say they over paid us, and were cutting us off for a funding we needed and were entitled to, and they still owed us for for another 5 months.
People seriously lose their brain matter when working for an agency or company that requires them to work from the step by step instructions in a book, they cannot think for themselves. it’s insane really!
He had to finally talk to her supervisor to get it straightened out! this is the level of competence we are dealing with here. We are smarter than them literally, but they treat us like we are retarded because we are disabled.
did I mention I hate paper work?
Posted by SuperADDMom on May 12, 2010
I live on the outskirts of a small town. I used to live in the small town, and for the last 5 years attended mommy play groups with other parents. So, when I go to town, I see some people I “know” on a hello basis.
Tonight when taking the girl to her swim class in town at the rec centre, I knew I had to go and pick up milk at the store my kids call “Big Tig” ( the store has a huge tiger painted on the side)
A few weeks ago we ran into the coordinator of a mommy and me evening program called Busy feet, and we had not gone since we moved from town.
Since the programs on Wednesdays overlap by an hour, she invited us to bring the boy while the girl is at her class, and tonight he mentioned to me that he wanted to go to busy feet.
He mentioned this as we were getting back in the van from dropping off the girl, and I happily agreed that we’d stop by to see after I picked up some milk.
And the very second I agreed to go check it out, and see people we have not seen in a while, I got in the van and flipped down the sun visor and noticed something that made me want to get out of going anywhere in public.
big black chin hairs! OHHHHHH crap! As a 35 year old ADD woman, with changing hormones, I no longer worry about pimples, but I’ve started growing stray dark black chairs out of my chin….this would not be so bad, but I forget to do a good check and pluck them out, and then I notice them at really awkward times, like when I’m in town, without tweezers, and needing to go somewhere in public.
I frantically searched my backpack for a pair of tweezers. I own several pair.. and I had THOUGHT i left a pair in my back pack for just this kind of situation…but a 5 minute search resulted in nothing, and found me bargaining with my 5 year old to find a reason to NOT go to busy feet, where I’d have to talk to people, and be totally aware in my own head of the black chin hairs. I rationalized that I’m sure no one will notice, but that it didn’t matter. I’d notice, and that was enough to make me nervous and anxious. I have social anxiety enough as it is with my communication issues due to hearing processing, and also reading people’s body language, so I didn’t need this kind of extra anxiety.
So, I drove to run an errand for The Mundane One, and got stuck in traffic, then went to big tig for milk, and decided to see if they had some cheap tweezers.
Cleaning the car last week while waiting for a dr appointment I’d found a $1 coin ( called a looney in Canada) and thought perhaps it wold save me.
IT DID. they had a pair of tweezers for a dollar!!!! so I bought them, and plucked them suckers out of my chin in the parking lot, and then went off to the play group with my boy for the last 40 minutes of it. And in all of that, I almost forgot to buy the milk!
(me in total “no makeup, hair in ponytail, not brushed today, stained sweater going to town mode”)
Being a sexy SuperADDmom is no simple task!
And I’m gonna yell at the Mundane One for letting me out the door like that!
I’m keeping the tweezers I bought today in the van from now on, for just this kind of situation!
Posted by SuperADDMom on April 29, 2010
ohhhh my… i just witnessed in myself a near meltdown from sensory overload.
This naming it to claim it stuff is draining.
Now that we’ve made the correlation of the Aspergers traits I have, I’ve been working on becoming more aware of when i’m having what I call “An Aspie Moment”
Sensory overload is a thing.. too much noise, to much light, to many colors. I am a very visual person, I see things very vivid and i notice EVERYTHING…unless I’m really hyper focused on something, I see and take in everything around me.
In the last few weeks, it has been interesting basically evaluating myself to see what is bothersome, when do things get too overwhelming, and how I deal with them, so I can deal with them better.
Being tired. Being in pain…they make it harder for me to filter, and process everything I take in. It then makes my ADHD traits worse, and I’m essentially a bumblling idiot who can’t remember what you call that thing you put things in to stay cold in the kitchen.
When I get that way, I get flustered, anxious. I have a hard time finding words to speak and I go inward. I get clumsy and trip over my own feet. I make mistakes, I get scatterbrained more. My depth perception is off, i break glasses, burn dinner, etc..the list goes on and on.
I recognize that in the past…I’ve dealt with these things, and have been avoiding actual panic attacks, or temper tantrums I guess by becoming actually moody, bitchy, cranky, sometimes even reach a boiling over point to near, if not total rage.
When I’m moody, bitchy, cranky, no one wants to be around me, and it was I guess a backward, sub conscious thing that allowed me some alone time. It gave me the time I needed to recuperate and stop the panic inside, calm down, and find a way to regroup and move on, and handle the sensory overload better.
So, with this awareness, i’ve been trying not to be cranky and be a bitch when I notice these overwhelming feelings coning on, and I’ve been trying to find a way to cope better that is healthier for the relationships with the other people in my life.
Diverting the kids to go somewhere else away from me, using my ear phones, but still being physically present etc.
But today was too much…..I’ve been this overloaded before…many times… but by now I’d always have been bitchy, cranky at people’s needs, yelled at the kids for the smallest things like how they are chewing their cookie near me ( the sound is SOOO ANNOYING and LOUD i can hardly stand it). I’d been cranky with hubby, and then this would cause strife for a while. There would be bad feelings between everyone, and then I’d need to recoup, AND get over the bad feelings, and apologize for my behaviour.
Today I fought the urge to be bitchy…It is very hard to fight the tendancy to revert to a coping stragedy I’ve used for 35 years. I managed to not flip out, but it was replaced by the urge to physically run away…I’ usually run away to the computer, and that in an of itself causes issues, because I retreat to the computer as a way to shut out the stuff that is overloading me, and then I get less done, and hubby gets mad at me for “being addicted” to the computer.
I’ve been trying not to run to the computer for a mental escape as much lately, and have been using a timer to force myself to do things that need to be done, for a certain period of time, before I go take a break.
So I didn’t run to the computer….but I got a feeling of being out of control and stuck in a situation I could not get out of, and I started to have a panic attack. Of course I put myself in the situation with my limits I’m trying to pose on myself in small ways.
But I could not run away from what I was doing to retreat to the computer, or even run away outside, because I was cooking food for people, baking cookies, and listening to hubby talk about stuff he wanted to tell me.
I had a loud self talk in my head saying. “pay attention, pay attention, listen….don’t panic, just finish the cookies and then you can leave. hang on ok!? Don’t get mad at everyone.”
At some point, I had three people trying to tell me something all at once over each other, and I could feel the need to get mad and yell “go away from me now, you’re driving me nuts!” I answered in a snappy tone and had to take a breathe and appologize right away to not let the responses to my snapping, roll over into the same old song and dance we always end up doing when I get to feeling this way.
I don’t know how I got through finishing the things I was doing in the kitchen, but the second I was done, I HAD to go away.
I had a tight chest, heavy breathing, and a headache behind my eyes coming on from the stress, because I wasn’t reverting to just coping by getting mad.
I’m upstairs now, in the office where I usually gazelle. it’s quiet, it’s good.I txt messaged hubby to tell him where i was and why.
I started writing this to try and get it out as it is pouring out of my brain, and I’m trying to relax.
I’m still buzzing in my brain and my body feels like how it feels when you drink too much caffine in a short amount of time…jittery and jumpy. But as that slowly starts to die off, and the adrenaline from my little Aspie moment is spent, I can feel how spent of energy I am…
My brain is fried right now, and I feel like I just need to sleep for a little while. I feel guilty about that, and I’m not sure anyone here would let me sleep for a little while to get some equilibrium back.
I hate this feeling.. these are the times, when I would get mad and bitchy at everyone and say “maybe I just need to live alone on a mountain in a yurt with no one around me, cause I can’t take this crap anymore”
sigh…..
A blog of a woman with aspergers has been really insightful in allowing me to go, hey…there’s a name for that!?
It’s a good thing to be making the connections… but also…. it processing, and dealing with stuff, and THAT is tiring to.
I never made the connections before but this is why I have what I call “recoup days” after we’ve had a day out shopping, or driving far to the city etc.
I’m discovering the reasons behind elements of who I am, I never really gave a second thought to.
if you’re interested in reading it…
http://www.aspieteacher.com/2009/07/be-an-aspie/
thanks for letting me spill that
Posted by SuperADDMom on April 28, 2010
We live in a very rural area, and about 12 klm from town of about 5000. there they have a fitness and aqua center, and this week I got the kids signed up for programs there.
We have a great community, that helps low income families like ours pay for such programs so they can attend. Honestly the gas in and of itself twice a week makes the budget tight for the next 8 weeks, but the program is covered, and the kids benefit from it tremendously in many ways.
Socially, physically, and even mentally and therapeutically for their sensory integration issues.
So for their age groups I have them in a gym and swim program, the girl had an hour of swimming ( informal swimming and water games, and some guidance, not lessons, but coaching just the same) and then an hour in the gym for a rules/lead game and some tumble and roll, trampoline gymnastics stuff.
She will be going every Wednesday evening, and then the boy will be in a similar set up on Thursday mornings for the next 8 weeks, but I need to attend with him and coach him in the pool, formal level red cross swimming lesson, with one leader/coach guiding us teaching our kid.
Anyway. her first night was tonight, and got the low down on all the boys who cheated at the games they played in the gym…ever the rules police she is 
Aspie kids are stickler for rules, and don’t adjust well to change. She has the added issue of being ADHD as well, and gets easily side tracked, so because of these things, she was terribly worried about going, that no one would like her, that she can’t swim very good, and she sucks at sports like soccer.
When we got there we discovered that due to pool availability, the swim portion of the 2 hour program is first. Which I think is really rather shitty, cause she’ll have to shower off the pool chemicals from her body to go to gym, and do all that in a timely fashion, AND then she’ll sweat and stink in the gym, and come home and need to shower again!
With a child who has an issues with time management, getting side tracked, and anxiety about changing in front of other girls, this could really put a major crimp in her liking this program at all. She was VERY upset…it’s different from how the program ran last year, so she was all bent out of shape over that at first….and she NEVER showers for less than 15 minutes, and THEN takes 15 minutes to dry and change….so I can’t just drop her off for a 2 hour free time in town, and then pick her up… I need to be there in the middle of the 2 hours, for the switch over, to ensure she stays on track. It is a good lesson for her to work at, and would be helpful, but still, not what we understood, not what we planned, and i can’t just take 2 hours to do errands, or maybe even enjoy a break at the library, or whatever, without needing to be back there an hour into it, and then hang around for 45 minutes left of the program.
But even with that…she had a good first night, and she was happy to be the first person dressed and ready for gym.
I’m glad she enjoyed it and came home with a smile on her face, and excited about it.
I’m really pleased with her instructor/leader. She eased into it well, though she was terrified and almost in tears at the beginning.
I hope that he is a sign of changes happening with a new generation of community leaders/teachers/coaches etc we are about to see more in upcoming years as my children and children with special needs are being accepted.
He’s energetic and young ( about 18/19) and great with the kids, and was receptive to my suggestions to make my girls’s experience better, to help lower her anxiety in social situations, and how to give her warnings for changing events/transitions easier. He didn’t know much about it, but he generally understood Aspergers and ADHD and was positive about her maybe needing a little extra coaching to stay on track.
I watched him interact with the kids in the pool, and with the kids in the gym, and leading the games, and He’s a positive verbal encourager, but not unfairly, and he high fives all the kids and makes them feel positive about their contributions….you can tell he is fresh in the game and loves his job.
I want more of this in my children’s future. He was a pleasure to watch coach the kids.
Tomorrow at 9:45, I’ll be back there with a great female instructor we know from my sons program last year, and last year he was very shy due to his CAPD…but he ASKED to go back this year, and is very excited about tomorrow. She’s in her mid 20′s, and she is just as great.
I rant a lot sometimes, so it is nice when I have the opportunity to share nice things
Posted by SuperADDMom on April 22, 2010
SOURCE LINK: http://www.publicnewsarchive.com/rewards-work-like-drugs-in-adhd/
The brains of children with attention-deficit disorders respond to on-the-spot rewards in the same way as they do to medication, say scientists.
A Nottingham University team measured brain activity as children played a computer game, offering extra points for less impulsive behaviour.
Their findings, published in Biological Psychiatry, could mean lower doses of drugs such as Ritalin in severe cases.
But they warn teachers and parents may often struggle to give instant rewards.
Estimates vary, but it is believed that up to 5% of children in the UK have some form of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
This can lead to behavioural problems including impulsive actions, fidgeting and poor attention span, and can affect a child’s academic and social progress.
In severe cases, stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, which act on parts of the brain associated with attention and behaviour, can be given.
In addition, parents are often asked to try to influence the child’s actions directly by rewarding positive behaviour and making sure that there are negative consequences if a child behaves badly.
Research has suggested that, unlike in non-ADHD children, these incentives and disincentives only work well if delivered on the spot, as opposed to later in the day or week.
The Nottingham team wanted to look at the effects of this “behaviour therapy” in the brain of the child.
They devised a computer game in which children had to “catch” aliens of a certain colour, while avoiding aliens of a different colour.
The game was designed to test the children’s ability to resist the impulse to grab the wrong sort of alien.
To test whether incentives made a difference, in one variant of the game the reward for catching the right alien was increased fivefold, as was the penalty for catching the wrong one.
Lower doses
Activity in different parts of the brain was monitored using an electroencephalogram (EEG).
They found that the incentives helped the children perform better at the game, although not to the same extent as the child’s normal dose of Ritalin.
However, the EEG revealed that both were “normalising” brain activity in the same regions.
Professor Chris Hollis, who led the research, said that the combination of drugs and incentives produced the best results, and might mean children with ADHD could take lower doses of drugs while maintaining control of their behaviour.
He said: “Although medication and behaviour therapy appear to be two very different approaches of treating ADHD, our study suggests that both types of intervention may have much in common in terms of their effect on the brain.
“Both help normalise similar components of brain function and improve performance.”
However, he conceded that it might not always be practical to use behavioural therapy.
“We know that children with ADHD respond disproportionately less well to delayed rewards – this could mean that in the ‘real world’ of the classroom or home, the neural effects of behavioural approaches using reinforcement and rewards may be less effective.”
Andrea Bilbow, from the National Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service (Addiss), echoed this: “It means you have to be in front of that child 24/7, and you just can’t do that – teachers and schools would have to totally change the way they deal with this.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Published by BBC on April 19th, 2010.
Posted by SuperADDMom on April 19, 2010
The stigma of living with ADHD is pretty negative at times. The negative impact it has on our day to day lives, and the people we live with can get pretty stressful. So stressful in fact that without help from medications to regulate brain chemistry, and being on top of RIGID routines to make life easier, we can end up being sucked down the big black ADHD holes of depression and inability to cope.
I grew up not knowing I had ADHD. I was just told I was lazy, and stupid, and bad, a daydreamer, etc. I didn’t learn to cope with my ADHD well, and now in my 30′s I’m basically teaching myself stuff i should have learned when i was younger. Kids today have advantages in the life skills with ADHD arena.But it is still not easy.
Some people think living with ADHD is a walk in the park because we get prescription drugs that are basically cousins in chemical make up to drugs that people take to get high, like Meth. ( drugs that have been around since 1955 BTW)
People see celebrities like Richard Branson, or Robin Williams ( with suspected ADHD) and think it must be a blast to have ADHD.
People make comments about being on medications for it, like we’ve somehow cheated a system to be granted legal narcotics, so we can get high.
As representatives of ADHD, you see these celebs as jovial, and friendly, and chatty. They are daredevils in racecars, or actors or comediens, business people, teachers, even doctors.
But you don’t see us ADDers among you scramble to keep a house clean, make dinner on time,get our kids out the door in a presentable fashion, With everything they need. You don’t see us struggle to make appointments on time, and the stress it causes us internally.You don’t see us struggle to keep a job, struggle to pay for these medications that are far more expensive then any street drug.
You don’t see us search for the 10th time this week for our missing car keys because we got side tracked or interrupted in the middle of putting them away, and we laid them down someplace, and we only realize it when we are already 5 minutes late to an appointment, or lunch with you. You don’t see that we are late because we also didn’t have any clean socks.
ADDers live a life of secret embarrassment for these kinds of things. We blame the traffic, or roll our eyes and say “kids! what are ya gonna do?” or we say ” hey I thought you said <insert what ever time is cloest to us not being late but just on time>, I’m sorry about that.”
We have to do things like set our clocks a half hour earlier and get everywhere a half hour before, just to ensure a “saftey zone” in our schedules to allow for ADHD blunders and mixups.
People with ADHD make mistakes, A LOT. Daily. hourly. We struggle to keep up in a world with standards and time tables set by people who don’t have ADHD.
So, as a person with ADHD it really pisses me off when people make jokes about my medication, or imply that I must be a “happy mommy” because I take amamphetamines to “get through the day”. Or they joke and ask me how I pulled off an ADHD diagnoasis just to “score”. They say things like ” nice deal if you can get it”
So…
Just to clarify…
An Amphetamine is a psychostimulant drug that is known to produce increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite. Amphetamine is related to drugs such as methamphetamine and dextroamphetamine, which are a group of potent drugs that act by increasing levels of norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine in the brain. All chemicals, if you bothered to look into it further,that you’d know ADDers have lower levels of.
We chose to put these chemicals in our systems, because it alters our brain chemistry to try and put us on a par level with people who don’t struggle through life with a sleepy brain, and so we can live better among a society who sees us as “broken, annoying, and beneath the rest” that need to be fixed.
FYI the hyper activity of ADHD is CAUSED by LACK of the chemicals those drugs help our bodies produce at more “normal” levels in order to STOP the hyperactivity. To bring us UP to a level of “normal” functioning like you have the ability to do just by breathing. We don’t take them to make us high. Bt they’d likely make YOU high.
I personally struggle in the morning to wake up because those chemicals are so low in my system. I could just sleep all the time without my ADHD medication. Did you know there are scientifically proven links between ADHD and narcolepsy
In order to be able to just walk to the bathroom upright in the morning, due to the morning haze my ADHD brain has, I have to set two alarms, one to take my meds and snooze back asleep until they start to wake me up more due to the chemicals in my brain rising from the help of the meds, and then I wake up to the second alarm, and even then STILL, it takes my brain at least an hour to feel functional. When my meds wear off toward the end of their effectivenes in the day, as a mother and wife I still have a lot of “work ” to do to keep a family with special needs functioning, and prepared for tomorrow.
If I don’t remember my meds one day, we fall out of routines and things get way out of sync, and we all must struggle to get back on track, because I go around in a scatterbrained haze unable to accomplish much of anything.
If I take my meds too late in the day, my brain is wide awake, and I can’t get to sleep and I’ll find myself awake at 4 am, planning a menu for the month, or tweeting, or watching movie, because my brain then won’t shut down until the chemicals dwindle down to a lower level to bring on sleep.
And, just so you understand the cycle… once my brain is FINALLY sleepy from the lack of chemicals again needed to stay awake… my brain will just want to stay sleepy, and we start the cycle the next morning all over again.
ADHD medication make us not want to eat as much and people struggle to get in the proper daily intake to remain healthy. This is especially a concern with children who are still growing.
I’m not sure what the Non ADHD world thinks, but having ADHD is not all fun and games. People with ADHD come from higher rates of divorced homes due to the chaos and stress ADHD traits cause in everyday living. Adults with ADHD, struggle in relationships to find a balance that works, and also have a higher rate of divorce.
People with ADHD have increased risk of drug and alcohol abuse ( trying to self medicate a constant sleepy brain), have higher rates of severe low self esteem and depression than the general population, as well as debilitating anxiety problems, and higher suicide rates.
Ya! pretending to have ADHD when I was 6 months pregnant and depressed to get a diagnosis finally, just to not be able to get any help with my brain chemistry for over a year, due to breastfeeding my son was a SURE sign I was looking for a quick cheap legal high.
HAHA YOU R FUNNY!
Oh? it is just a joke? oh. my bad…I’m such a stiff!
People with ADHD have higher rates of being in lower income levels due to struggling through school with learning difficulties, keeping jobs due to ADHD interrupting their ability to do their job to expected standards ( late for work, poor performance on bad days, forgetting projects due etc)
People with ADHD try to be upbeat and positive because we have SO MUCH negative stuff in our lives to deal with. Prescription drugs for ADHD is not a COPING thing. We are not getting high. Shit, smoking pot in highschool didn’t make me high, it made me normal! YA that was fun! Everyone else was giddy and high as a kite, and I was able to finally focus enough to go home and do my homework for the first time in my highschool career.
Our meds are helpers to the chemicals our brain cannot produce well enough on their own.PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
You’re stigma, prejudice and “jokes” are offensive. PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
So if you are gonna look in my face and say to me that my drugs make me hyper, or happy, or that ADHD can just be “cured or solved” with some basketball… well, sorry to be so blunt, but I’m gonna have to say…
FUCK YOU!
Plain and Simple.
YMCA Vancouver Paid Ad in a local paper. Charlene Giovannetti-King, the YMCA Vice President of Funds Development directly linked to the Advertisement said “We don’t see this really as a mistake” on a CBC radio interview with Rick Cluff.
Posted by SuperADDMom on March 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/21/health/healthguide/TE_ADHD_CLIPS.html
Interesting first person descriptions of living with ADHD
One guy says on here ” my mind is like a wall of TV screens and everything is on all at once, and I can’t control the remote.”
This is a GREAT explanation
ADHD is not a deficit in attention as the name implies… it is an attention surplus. Too many things in the brain all at the same time, unable to focus in on what needs to be the priority at that moment.
Posted by SuperADDMom on August 23, 2009
*I* should know better…I had a nephew from my first marriage die from fatigue driving 3 months before our wedding. He was supposed to be our groomsmen. Driving home after a long shift at work, and visiting his girlfriend, at 5 am, he fell alseep. Just like that… Gone.
*I* SHOULD know better…In our rural area, last year a well respected, well known business man, driving in the wee hours of the morning along a straight stretch, getting close to home, fell asleep, and hit a tree. Just like that…Gone.
I have family who are long haul truckers, who have to follow rules to stop and rest….I’ve driven from Nova Scotia to Ontario straight through MANY times, sharing shifts at the wheel when we each got tired…so if anybody should….*I* SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
I would never dream of drinking and driving…but when you’re tired…eh, who’s NOT tired this day and age right?
It’s been 3 busy days for me…during a very hot spell this summer, and I’ve had a terrible time going to sleep, and getting terrible sleep at best of the 6 to 7 hours I’ve gotten the last 2 nights. I could give you all the reasons WHY I’m tired, but we all have them. I’m on my period, so I’m more scatter brained, the joys of ADD to add to the whole situation.
But, even when you are tired you do what you need to do, and we needed bread,milk and eggs,some other essentials, and a new door for our house that we need to install before winter.
Home Depot had a door on sale, and we new it was ‘now or never” purchase opportunity. I was tired before we left around supper time. I was cranky, and hot…the kids were driving me nuts all day, being tired and cranky and hot too.
The city is about 35 minute drive from where we live. Due to my husband’s illness, I’m the driver in our family. Shopping under the stress of tired whiny kids, while I am tired just wears me out more. But this is usual, and we knew this ahead of time, but we went, because we had to. We did what we needed to do hopping at 4 different stores over a 4 hour time period or so. On the way out of the city we grabbed some fast food to eat on the way home.
We sat in the van to eat it, and then I started our 35 or so minute drive home on dark two lane rural roads on a Friday night after 11 pm
My husband mentions to me that he hates driving home at this hour because you never know what kind of idiot is out trying to drive home drunk. This is a fact I’d considered based on the fact that the drive into the city during daylight hours didn’t inspire any confidence by the way the oncoming traffic was being reckless trying to pass in badly chosen places, tail gating and speeding etc.
Traffic is not heavy, but for a Friday night in a rural/tourist area, it is steady enough with oncoming cars.
Some people are forgetting to turn off their high beams at the right time and are practically blinding me, making my already exhausted brain need to concentrate more to not be drawn to their lights like a moth to a flame. That really aggravates me, too, it’ is not like they don’t know I’m coming.
So, I pay attention to the corner of the pavement I’m driving on in my lane to avoid looking right at the headlights, to ensure I pass safely. I’m aware than I move a little to the right each time an oncoming car passes me. I’m trying to be safe.
I drive half way home sipping warm coke from a can, eating sweets and talking to my husband, shifting positions, doing what I need to to stay alert and awake. He hardly drives these days due to his disability, and he’s in a lot of pain today. I don’t want to ask him to drive. He’s tweeting on his Black Berry to a friend and telling me about the conversation to keep me alert.
We were not far from our destination. which is “just going home from grocery and home repair supply shopping”. He’s tweeting on his cell phone. Just another shopping trip. I’m always tired anyway.
He mentions I’m swerving a bit on the road. I say “I’m fine hon, just a bit tired”. It’s a reminder for me to pay closer attention. He says, its starting to freak him out a bit.
I decide half way home to stop & try to jar some adrenaline into my system, even though adrenalin is short lived, it’s worked before, and we are closer to home. I did jumping jacks, breathed fresh air, stretched, jogged a bit back and forth, drank more caffeine…just like countless other times that always work.
I get back in the van, and it’s ok, though I still am needing to concentrate more then I usually need to.
We make it to the little town just a few more minutes from where we live rurally, and I tell myself, it’s not far now…I think my brain starts to let it’s guard down now due to this knowledge.
We drive through the one main street of our town, checking out the lack of action going on in our little town at almost midnight.
I don’t even realize I’m having a micro dose until i “wake” from one. It feels like I’m not even really ever NOT aware of what’s going on, and no one else notices. A little more adrenaline makes my heart pump a bit, and makes me more alert, and I drive past the Tim Horton’s.
When I dozed this time Just a few feet up the street, my husband screamed my name and grabbed the wheel to jerk the wheel to the left miss a parked car in front of the flower shop I just about plowed into going 50 KLM, with no ability to brake for impact because I don;t see it coming.
He tells me to pull over now.
I do.
I’m in such a mental state of shock that I dozed that long or bad, that my heart is not even pounding. I notice my state of tired, and wonder how it got to that point.
I apologize, and we take a moment for HIM to slow his heart rate. I’m grateful he’s not freaking out on me. I mean we just avoided an accident. a very serious accident.What if he had been asleep like sometimes he does on the way home. What if that had of happened while we were on the road doing 70 to 80 KLM with oncoming traffic!
I’m too tired to even have adrenaline over that jar and have my heart pound so hard I can hear my heart beat in my head.
We switch and he drives home the last 10 klm. I’m grateful he does, I’m so exhausted I doze on and off on the way home, now suddenly jarring awake here and there worrying about HIM being awake enough to drive home. He’s fine, not sleepy, just in pain from his illness. I feel out of my element in the passenger side of our van, where I rarely sit but am releived to be right then.
When we get home, I bring in everything that we bought, door included, the kids go to bed and then crash…I have sleep to catch up on and I suck much! and don’t tell me I don’t.
When I woke up this morning, the slider door on the van was open, because I’d forgotten and left i open when taking our sleeping son up to bed.
The sobering effects of this event have not Left me, and I won’t allow them to.
And I wrote this, so hopefully YOU won’t either.
Stop depriving yourself of sleep. And Don’t Drive if you are feeling that tired.
To Husband and the kids…I’m sorry.
To my husband… thankyou.
Some fatigue Driving facts
A report produced by the Highway Safety Roundtable, compiles some of the latest available research on the consequences of driver fatigue. It linked to the deaths of some 400 Canadians every year to driver fatigue.
“The message is very clear that a lot more Canadians are driving tired on our roads than anyone has ever thought before, or ever wanted to admit before, and it is a very serious road safety issue. We really have to be a lot more aware of the dangers of fatigue than we have been up until now.”
-Mark Yakabuski, president of the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
Research based on Ontario traffic data suggests a long day at work could be triggering collisions, since most accidents involving fatigue occur between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and on Fridays.
The most fatal fatigue-related crashes occur between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.
“Fatigue is likely being under-reported, because police don’t have a good way to determine when it is a factor in a crash – unless drivers admit they were fatigued” – Yoassry Elzohairy, senior safety research adviser for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.
A 2005 study also found one in five drivers admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel during the previous 12 months.
Posted by SuperADDMom on July 1, 2009
sigh…..where do I even begin with THIS one… ugggg… my poor husband….he is such an amazing man to put up with everything that ADD has a part in for the chaos that is often our life caused by me.
IT’s been a rather interesting week or so, you see…I’m hitting menopause…yes, at 34 years old. I’m on the way out of the childbearing years. I knew it was likely to come earlier then typical for most, because all the women in my family have started their journey to “mature womanhood” around this age.
As such I’ve been having a lot of issues related to hormones…typical ones like heavier periods, longer ones, then shorter ones, hormones and mood fluctuations. Not to mention hitting a sexual peak for being REALLY interested and easily aroused, and being REALLY REALLY scatterbrained!
So today the BIG ADD moment and screw up was I drove to the city for about 20 KLM with the parking brake on.. yes folks… totally in a daze… mostly a sexual one, being all hot and bothered for my hubby sitting beside me smelling so damn hot, while we flirted obscurely without the kids aware of what we were saying from the back seat. I drove with the parking brake on. You see I have a check list I do for a lot of stuff I do, to make sure I do them…habits that I’ve come to incorporating to make sure I don;t make scatterbrained mistakes. IF I get side tracked from them,,, my world starts to unravel and I make a LOT of mistakes. So I forgot to do my checklist hen I got in the car before I put the car in drive.
It was NOT a nice moment when hubby realized it… I had to pull over the van and he got out and walked off the steam coming from his head from the anger at THAT one… the brakes are not good at best right now, and then I go an do that 
THAT was a crappy moment
We managed to make it through the rest of our trip relatively unscathed from my lack of ability to concentrate well, and are home now.. kids are fed and in bed. and I’m heading there now too. To take advantage of this new shift in sexual interest I have to THOROUGHLY make it up to hubby for the day we had !
