Ryan called the doctor and the doctor said…
“Ryan, you rate very high on the ADHD scale in your testing.”
Sweet Doc! Are you telling me that we can now explain why I’m so brilliant?!
“Yes, Ryan. That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying.”
But in all seriousness. Here’s the skinny…
Before my appointment on April 9th I did a battery of 13 tests. When I went in that first morning I spent another 2 hours with the psychologist taking some more tests and giving him my history.
This type of assessment is fairly exciting to me. Research allows us to identify where we stand given a baseline of common functioning. It’s not necessarily good or bad if we find ourselves deviating from the norm, but if functioning is impaired or if the deviation causes excess stress or difficulty in life then there’s a great opportunity to further examine the causes and cures for the dis-ease. Indeed, this approach can strongly aid a therapist’s intuition when making a diagnosis.
That Saturday I returned for some more indepth neuropsych testing. The WAIS and the MMPI are two of the tests that I took (or am taking…the MMPI is about 550 questions long, and as we’ll see, the diagnosis I came upon does NOT lend well to focusing :o) ).
April 17th I returned with my dear friend Emily Lyon to discuss the possibility of my having ADHD.
To be continued…