I know that a lot of people will make light jokes about having ADD. You know, everyone saying they have ADD or OCD when they truly don't? Many don't even think it is a real, existing condition. Well, if you are someone who really does have this disorder, just know that there are so many out there who make these claims because they are not the ones living with it.
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Hello again, all of my nursing and future-nursing friends!
I love that we have a place as great as allnurses.com to share our feelings, stories, and inspirations with each other. This is me, sharing my difficulties with day-to-day life having ADD.
I was diagnosed very young with attention deficit disorder.
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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a chronic condition including attention difficulty, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness.
I am not even sure exactly what age. I struggled to learn how to tell time. My father, a great man by the way, had a problem with managing his temper. Whenever he helped me with homework, it was a nerve-wracking experience. I remember trying to learn how to tell time, and I would be so scared of getting the wrong answers, because I knew he would get upset. Stress, made it nearly impossible to come to the right answers. Eventually, I was put on a medication that many of you are probably familiar with, Ritalin.
Oh, how I hated that drug. That drug changed who I was, who I could have been. It made me never want to take another medication for my condition to this day. I felt like I was a malnourished zombie; I was lethargic, socially absent, and I was unhappy. Let's just say that until I met my husband, my social life was very grim.
I was taken off of Ritalin sometime during middle school. I was not eating so much that it was no longer of any benefit to me to continue the medication. By that time, I was not confident enough to put myself out there and become more social. I ate more, but never enough. I would snack when I was home, but rarely ate a wholesome meal, but would eat most of my happy meals, which didn't help with my ADD, but made it worse. To this day, I still don't eat when I am stressed, even if I have migraines.
I know that when I exercise, my stress level decreases, and my appetite improves. Once I started nursing school, I had zero time to work out and stay healthy. I am taking some time off from my studies to return to my program next fall. Now, I am going to integrate more time for family, exercise, and reading my materials ahead to lessen my stress when school starts.
I wrote another article about my experience in my nursing program, going with my gut instincts, and withdrawing. This article you are currently reading was inspired by my last one because I left this part of me out of it. One person posted that they noticed my lack in time-management skills and poor study habits. I am glad that I got that post, because it showed me that I needed to go into details about why I struggled in school. This is my background for that missing information in my previous article.
I see now how I was not taking care of myself, and that in turn reflected on my schooling and life in general. I was always stressed, my emotions were very much unstable because of my condition. I found this other article on facebook shortly before I chose to withdraw. It helped me realize I needed to reevaluate my choices and how I was living day by day. I will supply the link to this post below because 19 of the 20 things on this articles list about people with ADD or ADHD apply to myself. It gives a great amount of simple understanding about people with this disorder.
