Originally Posted by jh479352
I not only have ADHD but dyslexia as well. It makes life much more difficult to the point, I want to leave. Does anyone else have this combo?
I am in the same boat as you. I have ADHD and dyslexia. I have learned how to deal with my ADHD, and since becomming an RN 1 year ago, I have a routine I made for my self everynight at the start of my shift at 1900 and end of shift at 0730. Routine is good for us ADHD people. But when I am over tired and over worked, the routine goes out the window and I am like one of those KONG Dog toys that you throw and it bounces all over the room in every different direction even if I took my ritalin, I am still all over the place. Although my pt's rave about what a great nurse I am, and I always greet them with a smile, and I have that enthuastic attitude that they need. And if I have had the same pt's 2 or 3 nights in a row, the pt's always say, "wow, when I asked how much hsleep you got b/t shifts and you said well 4 hours if that, I knew you had to be exhausted but I could never tell from how well you do your job." I wish I could say, " I am physically exhausted, my eyes hurt, my body hurts but can't slow down b/c I am a spaz, my mind is on overdrive and you don't know this but I ust had to read your MD's orders over 5 times or so to make sure I got them right. I do triple chart checks, I want to go home and go to bed." I wish i could say that.
Being dyslexic on top of being ADHD is awful. GOD, when I was in nursing school my ADPIE's were all over the place, but I had a great Nuring Clinical Instructor sit me down and say you can do this, just write it all out on another paper, and re-arrange it to fit your ADPIE, you have all the information in your ADPIE's it's just reorganizing it in the right order. I confided in her I was dyslexic and ADHD, she said she could tell I was ADHD but I used it to my advantage in the pt. care setting.But when it comes to paper work, she said well this is why I want you to write it out on a seperate paper and re-organize it untill it looks right.
I did what she said and 3 years later even as an RN I still do it from time to time. and it always helps. She even gave me an easy way to write my pt. reports at start of shift for when I became an RN. I have ben an Rn for 1 year and I still use her way of taking report every night I work and it always makes my life 100 times easier.
But I can say when I am on my 3rd 13 hour sift in a row, my dyslexia gets the best of me. My first night, I an on the ball and super nurse, the second night I am a little more likely to see mising words, have to read med orders and check and re-check if orders were entered, I always check my meds and txs I do 3-4 times before I do them, being tired makes my dyslexia worse.. That 3rd night in a row, I chck and recheck, go over meds in the MAR multiple times, and check if there are any pending labs or tx's and to make sure they are correct.
I don't really get med. names mixed up. But if it's my 3 13 hour shift in a row and I have to hang Primacore, Natrecore or any other inotrope drips I always have the colleague guardian on the IV pump set and I have another nurse just double check ith me what the dosae it ect....
I don't tell them I have dyslexia, I just double and triplr check verything I do.
I hate being dyslexic. 7's look like L's, 3 can be a B or an 8. R,K and E's forget about it. Every other sentence moves while reading a paragraph. I skip words. When I was in NS I had a hard time with my dyslexia.
My fiance's mom, who is a learning specialst, gave me a test with different color seethrough slides you can place over a page in a book. She used 13 diffrernt color slides. She said what do you see on a regular text book page while usingone of my nursing books and made me read a paragraph out loud. I said every other line of the paragrah either dissapears or moves, while I read it normally. She began to place these diffrent color slides over the text book page. They ranged from red, to yellow to blue to a dark grey. She said tell me when it gets better. After 11 slides of all differnt colors, she placed a meduim dark gray slide over my text book page and it was as clear as day. No movement of the words, no missing sentenances. I was able to read an entire paragraph with out any problems. She said do you usually read in a dim lit room, I said yes.
She began to tell me that people with Dyslexia, when reading a book with white pages and black print, in a well lit room have the problems. She told me that it had to do with the light refractory from the book to the eye, and that people with Dyslexia need the white to be toned way down, hence the reason I like to read in a dim light room. So we turned the lights way up, she placed the grey slide over my text book page, and said can you read this page with the same slide as before but with the lights turned up, and she even made me go to a different room that had those awful folorscent over head lights and said with the dark grey side over your nursing text book page. In both rooms, with the lights well lit, how do the sentences look. I was astonished that just putting a dark grey seethrough slide over my text book page made a dramatic difference, while reading in a well lit room. No more backwards letters, no more, phantom sentenances, no more paragrph movement.
So I know how much it sucks being ADHD and dyslexic. It's a double whammy. And as an RN I have to CYA all the time. Only my best friend at work knows I am dyslexic, and the 2 of us are ADHD. She can tell when I am overtired b/c we drive to wkr together and I will read something and it cpmes out wrong.
Would you like to comment?
I hear Adderall that is taken BID works better.
