(Source: Manichaeism)

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A.D.D.ers are the embodiment of the struggle of light versus dark. Every moment these opposing forces fight for control of the A.D.D.er. Fought within the boundaries of their mind (and body), A.D.D.ers are locked in a lonely internal battle. Therapy, drugs and self-help books are the weapons of war but they are not powerful enough for light to definitively triumph over dark. Some battles are won. Some are lost. And the war rages on with no end in sight. 

Many A.D.D. soldiers chronicle their victories and defeats in blogs like the ones listed below. This externalization through narrative releases internal tensions, though only for a moment. By externalizing the internal they reveal that which occurs within the circumscribed boundaries of their war.  Externalization makes visible the invisible "internal" battles fought by A.D.D.ers. By rendering the invisible visible, externalization allows other A.D.D.ers to see that they are all engaged in the same fight. Of course there are differences, but all A.D.D.ers battle with issues of time, memory, emotion and sex. By reading how others have fought their own battles, A.D.D.ers are able to learn from those other A.D.D.ers and, therefore, they are better equipped for their own ongoing battles. 

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• Chicago Carless: The off-road journey of an ongoing Chicagoan
• lifedoodling:Restarting Life With AD/HD - The Good, The Bad, and Life Inbetween
• Alternative Dimensional Design
• Treadmill to Nowhere
• Whatever

1. Take 15 minutes every single day to plan your schedule. A small investment in planning goes a long way towards reducing stress and overwhelm.
2. Always keep a to-do list. Your to-do list is your friend. It helps you keep track of all those tasks  that are so easily forgotten.
3. Pay attention to your  biorhythms.  Work with your natural energy levels instead of trying to change them.
4. Schedule down time and relaxation. Self-care is one of the first things to be sacrificed when things get busy.
5. Don't give up when you get overwhelmed. It's normal to fall off track every now and then. Don't beat yourself up. Do recharge and resume steps 1-4 as soon as possible.

Source: Master the Art of Time Management

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Kvetch: To complain persistently and whiningly (Source: Kvetch)

I should be thankful. At my new job (now there for six months) they bought me a new laptop. So you think I would be thankful for my new laptop, no? Of course I am…NOT. So…I present to you…my complaint list of all the things I hate about this new laptop. 

Why I Hate the Dell Latitude D630C 

1.    A wonderful screen…if you can see it.
    a.    I am 50 years old. I am near-sighted. I have progressive lenses. I can’t see the screen as well as I would like (unless my face is smashed up against the screen). I’ve changed the default font size for MS Windows but that only effects changes with some aspects of Windows and not others. If I drop the screen resolution the fonts turn fuzzy.

2.    Terrible sound
    a.    Only one dinky speaker? That’s all you could spare? At least the sound is good once I plug in headphones.

3.    Built-in microphone?
    a.    Doesn’t exist. My six year old Thinkpad has one.

4.    Built-in keyboard light?
    a.    Doesn’t exist. My six year old Thinkpad has one.

5.    Take your pointer and shove it.
    a.    I like the eraserhead on my old Thinkpad. I tried to get used to the Dell version. I eventually turned it off. I’m learning how to love the touchpad. (Hint: I still like to hook up a mouse.)

6.    Touchpad sucks
    a.    Something is screwed up with the touchpad. A light touch does make the pointer move…and then sometimes it doesn't. Other times a light touch is misinterpreted as a double-click. Maybe I will play with the sensitivity…again.

7.    AC Cord too short
    a.    The AC Cord/External Power Supply could have a longer cord…about two feet longer. Again, compared to my old Thinkpad, the cord is short.

8.    What I Do Like
    a.    Nice feel to the keyboard. Good click and enough resistance that it doesn’t feel mushy.
    b.    The screen is nice and bright even if you can’t read a darned thing.
    c.    Batteries are good. They seem to hold a charge quite nicely. But, of course,they are new batteries. Let’s see how they hold up after two years of charges and discharges.

The non-A.D.D. world marches forward and leaves you further and further behind. Every day you re-imagine the trajectories of your life (what if I married that person instead of the one I am married to now? what if I take that job instead of the one I have now? what if I suddenly win the state lottery?) Your life remains mired in “becoming” but never quite “being.” You never quite arrive at a whole, consistent “you.”

And then one day you find you are fifty years old. Your children are older and, somehow, more dependent on you than when they were small. The financial burdens have grown as you are faced with college tuition and, gasp, the unthinkable, YOUR possible retirement. But at age fifty you now see things you did not see before. You now see the trajectories that are closed off. Though fantasies remain, the biggest fantasy of all, the possibility of following a different life trajectory, is basically over. Yes, you can get divorced and marry that attractive young woman who works in your office but, let's be realistic. Can you really do that? And even if you could (and DID!) what does that really mean? You will not be a thirty year old with a young woman…you will be an old man with a thirty year old. You cannot relive being thirty and having a different wife. You cannot relive those moments. They are gone. They cannot be recaptured. They cannot be replayed. Unlike in childhood, in real life there is no "do over." There is only "do once." Maybe, if you are lucky, "do twice" but at some point you are faced with "never be able to do again." And while "never be able to do again" may seem like the death of an A.D.D.er, it is, at the same time, liberating because you can now ignore the lure of the path you might have taken. Your focus becomes sharper. You are still A.D.D. but the fantasies lessen as reality and, yes, mortality, becomes a very real thought. Your Cassandra-like qualities sharpen and life becomes a very serious pursuit.

I had thought that becoming fifty years old would be the most depressing event of my life. As an A.D.D.er, it is, interestingly, one of the happier moments of my life. Part of that happiness is a result of a shortened time horizon. I am not looking at a career that stretches for the next forty years of my life. Instead, I am looking at a much more manageable ten or fifteen years. This is a time horizon that I can see, that I can plan for, that I can trace its likely trajectory. It is not an abyss of empty time but a usable and manageable block of time. It is a slice of calmness and sanity which too often eludes the A.D.D.er. If I could freeze time I would not want to be thirty years old again or eighteen years old. I much prefer the calmness and intellectual acuity that comes with being an older A.D.D.er. 

1 Resolve - what is on your mind and how can you put it aside until tomorrow?
2 Relax - what helps you to stop, sit down and take time out of your day?
3 Release - what helps your mind switch off and drift to think about nothing in particular?

Source: Tips for beating semisomnia

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Before I explain how my father died, it is important that we first do our "amens" and "hallelujahs."

This is the greatest country in the world. Now you say "Amen."
Americans are the smartest people on Earth. Again, you say "Amen."
We have the best health care system in the world. Let me hear you say "Hallelujah!" 

Now…let the story begin.

On January 4, 2008, my father was admitted to a nursing home in Florida. Some time during the previous month he had a small stroke that made it impossible for him to walk ("shuffle" is a more apt description). The nursing home stay was meant to be rehabilitative so that he could learn how to walk again. The first week he was making enormous progress and then things starting to go wrong. One day he had a large gash on his nose. Another day it seemed that he was given his day medications at night which kept him awake all night long. Another time his new sneakers suddenly disappeared.

By the second week at the nursing home something was terribly wrong and he was rushed to the hospital. The doctors gave him 48 hours to live. His kidneys had stopped functioning. He had a fever and a urinary tract infection. They determined he was completely dehydrated. The hospital administered an IV drip and antibiotics. I was in constant phone contact with my brother down in Florida (I live in New York) who told me that all the funeral arrangements had been made and now they are just waiting for him to die. I made arrangements to fly down as soon as possible. By the time I got down to Florida (about 72 hours after he was admitted into the hospital) his kidneys were functioning and he was like a chatterbox, talk with everyone in the room and making jokes. 

As I later found out, the nursing home had failed to keep him hydrated. Since most stroke victims have trouble swallowing a thickening agent is added to liquids because the stroke victim has a better chance controlling the flow of the thickened liquid so that it flows into the esophagus. At the nursing home they did not care how much thickening agent they added to the liquid. It turns out, they added so much thickening agent that my father could not drink at all. (Oh…did I forget to mention? A lot of stroke victims drink using a straw.) The gash on his nose was a result of him falling out of his wheelchair. (Ooops…someone forgot to strap him in.) Though he was diabetic, they gave him lots of orange juice (a no-no for diabetics because of its high sugar content).

After several days in Florida I flew back to New York thinking that a crisis had been averted. My father was sent to a different nursing home for rehabilitation. About a week later he was back at the hospital. His body was riddled with infections and his kidneys shut down again. The hospital put him on antibiotics and, even though he was fully hydrated, his kidneys were not functioning. It was determined that his body could not handle the stress of a dialysis machine. A DNR was signed, he was placed on a morphine drip and, after eight days, he died in his sleep around 10:40pm on the evening of February 12, 2008.

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As news of my father's death started to become common knowledge among the doctors that had known him, they were startled to hear of his death. He had a very strong heart and his kidneys had always worked fine. In fact, prior to being admitted to the nursing the first time around, he had just completed a blood test which showed that he was slightly anemic and nothing more.

My mother has been gathering up copies of all his medical records from the nursing homes and the hospital. She's contemplating a lawsuit against the first nursing home. I will leave it up to her as to whether she should or should not pursue it. I'm not sure what I would do. On the one hand you have to go on with your life, on the other you want to see some justice in an unjust world. 

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To complete the circle we must end this post the way it started. Let's say our our "amens" and "hallelujahs."

This is the greatest country in the world. Now you say "Amen."
Americans are the smartest people on Earth. Again, you say "Amen."
We have the best health care system in the world. Let me hear you say "Hallelujah!"

• Thank You No. 1: The blog is entitled Whatever. Be sure to check out this post What It's Like To Have ADD. This is a long read but well worth it. It is frighteningly accurate in its description of ADD.
• Thank You No. 2: The blog is entitled lifedoodling. A particular post mentioned my blog in the context of finding someone you can identify with…an especially difficult thing if you are an ADDer. 
• Thank You No. 3: The blog is entitled Alternative Dimensional Design. A particularly interesting posting is Polychronicity. Here's a hint as to what the post is about: poly means many and chron means time. If you are an ADDer, that's all the info you need to figure out the subject matter of the post.

Source: The miracle of melancholia

• sexes enormous - See "girlfriend, zoftik."
• surgeon discomfort discussing sex  - No surprise there. Probably makes sense to first wait for the anaesthesia to wear off.
• shoot for the cure - Believe me…I've thought of that cure.
• adult adhd deregulation - Is it handled by OSHA or the CDC?