An ADDitional Piece of The Puzzle

So, I emailed my therapist last week about something (not related to the topic of this post), and I mentioned that I have so much trouble switching my focus from one thing to another.  If I’m on top of things at work and have a productive day, then when I get home I can’t seem to switch gears and take care of the things I need to do in my personal life because my head is still at work.  If I get involved in working on a novel or a web site or some other project at home, then when I go to work, I can’t seem to stop thinking about that project and focus on my work.

My therapist commented that difficulty transitioning is a strong indicator of adult ADD.  I’d actually wondered, four or five years ago, if I might have adult ADD, but I quickly discounted the idea because (1) I’ve never been hyperactive a day in my life . . . or really, anything that even resembles any usage of the word “active”, and (2) I’m sometimes very able to  focus, even to an extreme.  I have a small web design business and have a half-dozen or so web sites that I maintain and I often build new ones for personal use, and I’ve been known to work on a web site for 14 hours straight, focusing on it to the exclusion of everything else except the occasional need to pee or eat or drink water or coffee.

As it turns out, hyperfocus is a symptom, and can be a good thing, when channelled properly.  I guess I just need to learn how not to forget to take care of other things that are important.

I found this ADD web page, and the majority of what it says is so on-the-mark.  My therapist offered to do a formal assessment, or not, as I chose.  I wavered a little, thought about it, and then finally decided to just do it and find out.  What could it hurt to find out?  The results were pretty clear.

And this explains so much.

Now I am realizing that finishing NaNoWriMo felt like such a big deal to me for very good reason.  All the introspection, all the trying to figure out the psychological reason(s) for my apparent fear of success, and coming up with nothing that really rang a bell, other than “If I succeed, people will expect me to keep succeeding, and I’m not confident I can do that” . . . it makes a lot more sense now.

The never finishing anything (one of my friends pointed that out to me just recently, that in the three years since she’s known me, I have begun several projects, novels, etc., and she never heard me ever say I’d finished any of them, and I’ve been this way for years and years), the hyperfocusing on one thing while forgetting to do other very important things, the stupid mistakes at work that would (and understandably should) have gotten me fired a long time ago if my boss hadn’t given me so many chances to redeem myself, the way I so often “zone out” in conversations (that used to drive one of my exes batshit – I don’t mean to do it), the inability to get to work on time more than about six times a year . . . so many things make more sense now.

I hadn’t been aware there was still another piece of the puzzle that I didn’t have.  I’d been blaming all my focus and concentration problems on the different health issues I have that can all come with those symptoms.  That, and I did believe that underneath it all I must just be a lazy loser.  I thought this was as good as I was going to get, and that I would just have to accept it.

In spite of making the decision to go back to school, I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to do it.  I knew enough to try and prioritize what I’ll need to do before I can start, like getting into a habit of eating healthy and losing some weight, so I can be a bit less sleepy all the time and have more stamina, as well as being in the habit of planning ahead with meals so I won’t be left to eat from vending machines at school (which would be difficult because of the gluten and also wouldn’t help in my fight against fatigue or my weight loss attempts).  Knowing about the ADD, though, is a good thing, because now I can finally let go of that “I’m-a-loser” mantra and start forgiving myself and working toward solutions.

My therapist loaned me her copy of Driven to Distraction and I started reading it last night.  I’ve already found some information in it that I think will be very helpful.  I did have to laugh, though, at the idea of reading a book about how to deal with ADD when reading retention and reading the same paragraph over and over are symptoms of ADD.  But the authors both have ADD, so I’m figuring if they could manage to write it, I can manage to read it.  And I do read a lot.  It’s just been taking me longer to read something in the last several years than it used to.  I’d been wondering why I was having so much trouble following a novel anymore.  I can never guess whodunnit anymore because I confuse and forget little details about certain characters and mix them up.

I’m even thinking the reason I tend to eat the same thing for dinner most nights is possibly ADD-related, since I have so much trouble planning ahead and figuring out all the steps involved in making something different each night.  I’m also even more pleased, now, with my decision to just make that quirk work for me and go ahead and eat mostly the same things on my diet as well.  And it’s still working, so far.

Leaving you with some interesting myths from the web site I linked to in the fourth paragraph:

Adult ADD Myths: Fact or Fiction

MYTH: ADD is just a lack of willpower. Persons with ADD focus well on things that interest them; they could focus on any other tasks if they really wanted to.

FACT: ADD looks very much like a willpower problem, but it isn’t. It’s essentially a chemical problem in the management systems of the brain.

MYTH: Everybody has the symptoms of ADD, and anyone with adequate intelligence can overcome these difficulties.

FACT: ADD affects persons of all levels of intelligence. And although everyone sometimes has symptoms of ADD, only those with chronic impairments from these symptoms warrant an ADD diagnosis.

MYTH: Someone can’t have ADD and also have depression, anxiety, or other psychiatric problems.

FACT: A person with ADD is six times more likely to have another psychiatric or learning disorder than most other people. ADD usually overlaps with other disorders.

MYTH: ADD doesn’t really cause much damage to a person’s life.

FACT: Untreated or inadequately treated ADD syndrome often severely impairs learning, family life, education, work life, social interactions, and driving safely.

MYTH: Unless you have been diagnosed with ADD as a child, you can’t have it as an adult.

FACT: Many adults have struggled all their lives with unrecognized ADD impairments. They haven’t received help because they assumed that their chronic difficulties, like depression or anxiety, were caused by other impairments that did not respond to the usual treatments.

Palpitations, Migraines, and Fatigue . . . Oh My!

Because symptoms like depression, fatigue, and migraines are associated with every health issue I deal with, when one or more of those symptoms becomes worse, I tend to look to one of those issues to blame.  Do I also have IBS-like symptoms accompanied by gas and bloating and intestinal pain?  I must have been glutened.  Do my arms and shoulders and upper back hurt and has the weather changed recently (from cold to hot or humid to dry, or the other way around) or did I overdo something physically?  It’s just a Fibromyalgia flareup, then.  Could it be hormonal?  It could be related to the menopause, or the PMDD, or maybe the PCOS.

Update 3/24/09: If I experience “brain fog” or an inability to focus on or begin a task, this could be caused by (or due to a combination of causes related to) gluten, Fibromyalgia, or ADD.

But when it’s accompanied by intense feelings of panic or anxiety (as if my chest is going to explode or I’m going to jump out of my skin), palpitations, chest pressure, a heavy “sinking feeling” (sometimes accompanied by a feeling like grief or dread) in my chest, or a really uncomfortable “fluttering” in my chest, as if my heart has turned itself upside down, I haven’t known what to do with that.

My sister, who was diagnosed with Mitral Valve Prolapse about 25 years ago, has been telling me for awhile that I need to mention it to my doctor, because so much of what I describe sounds just like what she experiences.

“Anxiety, panic attacks, and depression may be associated with mitral valve prolapse. Like fatigue, these symptoms are believed to be related to imbalances of the autonomic nervous system.” - MedicineNet.com

I’ve been having palpitations at times for about 25 years (most often after eating, and they last for at least an hour, usually longer), but the other stuff is newer, over about the last year to year-and-a-half.  It took me awhile to bring it up to the doctor, because I don’t see my GP very often, and every time I’ve gone, they always said my heart sounded great, though I do know that MVP is difficult to hear.  I did have a different doctor, about 12 years ago, tell me she heard a “click”, and she asked me if I’d ever heard of MVP.  I said yes, that my sister had it, and she suggested that we look into that.  I changed insurance companies shortly after that, though, and changed doctors as a result, and when the new (my current) doctor and nurse practitioner never heard it, I just assumed it was a mistake the other time.  My blood pressure and cholesterol are always very good, but that probably doesn’t indicate anything in this case.  I’ve just always been kind of proud of having a healthy heart and haven’t wanted to concede that anything could be wrong (as if I had anything to do with it; with the way I eat and my lack of exercise, I definitely can’t claim credit for my good fortune in the healthy heart department).

Anyway, I finally brought it up when I saw my nurse practitioner last week, and she ordered a consult with a cardiologist for this morning, and I’m on a Holter monitor for 24 hours.  (I told my coworker when I got back to work, “Don’t freak me out; I’m wired.”)

I’d mentioned to my nurse practitioner that certain foods trigger the symptoms I’m experiencing.  She told me to eat some of those foods today.  Peanut butter and corn chips are two biggies, and I had temporarily forgotten (over and over again) that M&M’s belong on the list, too.  It seems that every time I eat M&M’s, I have a reaction, but in the month or two before I buy them again, I manage to forget that I reacted to them in the past.  Denial is a powerful thing.  In fact, I had completely forgotten (until one day last week when I was talking to my sister about it) that a few years ago, when I was dog-sitting for some friends and was sitting and eating M&M’s while watching TV, I had some pretty intense chest pain afterward.  Most people don’t forget that sort of thing, you know?

But anyway.

I’ve been thinking it was more likely that this is a food sensitivity thing than MVP, but from reading the information on the Conscious Choice web site, I learned that they could go together.

“Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and MVP
In the new field of environmental medicine we are identifying a type of patient we call a “universal reactor.” This is a person who appears to be reacting with hypersensitivity to many environmental influences, including food additives, chemicals in the environment, dry cleaning chemicals, smells from plastic or vinyl, or the detergent aisle in the grocery store. These stimuli can set off a cascade of distressing reactions. Conventional medicine views this as a delusional state, and suggests that these people are becoming phobic to foods or smells, and suffering from depression or panic disorder.

“A more enlightened view is that these patients have suffered various environmental insults, such as living or working in an unventilated space with overwhelming paint or new carpet fumes, which have triggered their multiple sensitivity. People with mitral valve prolapse may have an underlying susceptibility to environmental stimuli that helps trigger this condition.”

My sister was the one who pointed out to me that not only am I gluten intolerant and extremely sensitive to even the slightest cross-contamination, but I also comment often about strong smells that others around me don’t find to be nearly so strong as I do.  Just last month, on the final day of NaNo, I was down to my last 1000 words, and I took a break and was looking through some old stuff in a drawer and I found several packages of incense that I haven’t used in years.  I couldn’t quite remember why I had stopped using it, and I got a stick out and lit it, and had chest pain, which was when I remembered why I had stopped using it before, so I put it out and I’m going to give all the incense away.  I can handle scented candles, but if I’m too close to them, I sometimes will feel choked up.  I also remember having chest pain when I used to use oil warmers and essential oils, which was a huge disappointment to me, since I loved them.

(I’m including all this excess information in this post just in case someone lands here in an effort to understand some weird symptoms they are having.  If I can help someone else, that’s great.)

At the risk of looking and sounding like a raging hypochondriac, I made a spreadsheet where I copied and pasted the main symptoms for each issue I deal with, and made a column for each issue and checked off what the symptoms apply to.  I alphabatized the list and combined same or similar symptoms and those that were lumped together, and I can clearly see that my top complaints in how I feel and function do indeed apply to all the issues.  I wound up being glad I spent the time to make the chart, because now when I’m depressed or having a migraine or feeling painfully fatigued (yes, it really does hurt), I can remind myself it’s just something I’m going to have to keep consciously working to overcome and not a personal weakness or character flaw to beat myself up for.  And I can’t help but to keep hoping that it is still within my power to reduce my symptoms significantly, by losing weight and avoiding trigger foods and by exercising, which I haven’t really done with any long-lasting regularity yet.

I had been feeling pretty good toward the end of last week and over the weekend (after a really bad bout of constant anxiety and all the symptoms in paragraph two, along with depression).  I cut out caffeine (with the exception of a few small pieces of dark chocolate), peanut butter, corn chips, and M&M’s.  As each day passed, I felt better than the last.  Then last night, I bought more M&M’s so I could eat some today for the test, and of course, the temptation monster was extra powerful and I ate some last night.  I had anxiety and palpitations all evening, during the night when I was trying to sleep, and this morning.  Maybe now I’ll finally start to remember what they do to me.

My sister has told me about how her doctor had asked her if she had any recent, irrational fears or phobias at the time she was diagnosed, and she’d remarked that she’d been suddenly afraid of thunder storms for no aparent reason.  Her doctor told her that irrational fears or  phobias can also go along with MVP.  I’ve been noticing that for a year or two, I’ve been way more paranoid than I ever used to be (mostly about the state of my job, and the way my focus and concentration problems cause trouble in my ability to do my job properly).  There is a basis for some of the paranoia, but not to the extent I seem to take it in my head.

My sister also told me that ever since she began to have symptoms, she finds that she can’t stand to hear music that has a heartbeat-like rhythm or watch a scary movie where they use that heartbeat-like sound to induce tension.  My “thing” is (and has been for several years) being near a car with one of those booming stereo systems turned up loud.  I’m generally a pretty passive, live-and-let-live sort of person, but if anything can make me feel like getting out of my car and pulling a stranger out of his/her vehicle by his/her hair and beating the crap out of him/her for no reason, that is it.  Of course, I’ve never acted on those feelings, and I haven’t been noticing those kind of stereos f0r at least a couple years anymore.  I think there were new noise laws passed awhile back that must account for that.

So, I’ll know what’s going on soon.  Of course, I’m not automatically assuming it’s MVP.  It still could be another food sensitivity issue (though what is in peanut butter, corn chips, and M&M’s, I don’t know; corn syrup or corn oil seems like the most likely possibility, except it’s not listed as an ingredient in my peanut butter), or it could be pure anxiety, possibly magnified by menopause.  And, this is a particularly stressful time in several ways.  It’s Christmas time, which has always been hard for me, and money problems have been continually worstening for most everyone.  I made the decision to go back to school for Medical Transcription, and that brought a whole host of questions to the surface that I don’t know the answers to (Am I physically capable of the kind of commitment it will take to go to school for two to three years, probalby two to three evenings a week, in addition to working full time, when for the last few years, holding down my job has been about the limit of my functionality?  And if I don’t go back to school, where will I be in two to three years?  And, of course, there are the lack-of-confidence issues, like the fact that I haven’t been a student in 24 years, and I wasn’t a good student even then.  The last time I was a good student, I was in 6th grade.  That’s probably a whole entry in itself.)  Coupled with the stess is the fact that I drank more coffee in November, during NaNoWriMo, than I generally drink in probably three months.  Fortunately, I didn’t continue the candy thing all month, but the amount I ate was way too much.

I just feel that I’ve spent so many years researching, trying new vitamins and supplements, new diets, etc., avoiding medications and all their side effects, only to have most things seem to work wonders at first and then gradually lose effectiveness.  So I’m tired, and yeah, as bad as it sounds, I would love for this to turn out to be a clear-cut physical condition (especially one as relatively minor as MVP, as opposed to heart disease) that I can take medicine for and feel better.

Because. I. Can.

Finishing NaNoWriMo with over 50,000 words this year was about so much more than writing 50,000 words.

Looking back at the numbers from past years, I see that after the first two years, the percentage of NaNo participants who actually crossed the 50K finish line ranges from 14% to 17%.  It’s an accomplisment to be proud of, in itself.

But this was about teaching myself that I am capable of deciding to do something and doing it.  I know, that sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But for years, thirty-plus years, in fact, I have had a resistence to success.  Some people have a fear of failure.  Not succeeding is not an option.  For me, it’s been the opposite.  I’ve worked hard to strive for mediocrity.  I’m not completely clear on why.  Not wanting to invite a lot of attention to myself, maybe?  I’m not sure.  I only recently started to admit it out loud.

The last success I had was quitting smoking twelve years ago.  Before that, it was probably losing a good deal of weight (though not all I set out to lose) when I was 17 (and then I gained it back, and then some, for reasons I might write about some other time.  Maybe.)  Other than that, I’ve pretty much avoided doing very much I could be really proud of.

I’ve managed to stick with some things over time.  I’ve been at my job for over 11 years, for instance, but I don’t earn enough money to properly cover my bills and expenses.  I’m always scrambling to stay afloat and having to forego eating healthy most weeks because there’s nothing left for groceries.  I’ve beaten myself up for not staying in college so I could be earning more money now, and I’ve held onto the dream of someday becoming a published novelist and supporting myself with my novels, but have continued to never finish a novel.

Beating myself up for not succeeding, while continuing to avoid succeeding.

Recently, in therapy, the topic of my going back to school came up.  No, no, of course I wasn’t the one who brought it up; it had never occurred to me.  Not since about six years ago, when I was going to go to school for web design and chickend out after registering, and then spent the years since then believing it just wasn’t an option for me.  But my therapist asked me, if I were going to go back to school and go into some other kind of work, what I would want to do.  I suddenly remembered having thought, years ago, that I might like to do medical transcription.  I’ve always had decent spelling skills and discovered a possible aptitude for medical terminology years ago, when I worked part-time for an answering service and could almost always spell the medical terms in the doctors’ messages without stopping to look them up.  It’s a job I potentially could do at home, and according to the information on the community college web site, I could earn between six and ten thousand dollars more a year than I do now.

So I decided to do it.  It’ll take me between two and three years (probably closer to three years) going part-time, and I’m scared shitless, but I’m going to do it.  Three years from now, my life will be better for it.  I’ll be making enough money to survive and, if all goes according to plan, I’ll have finished one or two novels and be in the habit of completing what I start.  I can still pursue the goal of publishing, but it should be because I love to write and not because I have attached all my hopes of being financially independent onto it.

This year, I decided to make winning NaNoWriMo be about taking that first step in teaching myself I can succeed after all.  For the first time in a long, long time,  I have experienced how it feels to set out to do something and then actually do it, and you know what?  I like it.

Many thanks to Violet Hill for sharing her NaNo icons.