Life in the Slow Lane - Time to Deal with Some ADHD Problem Issues

Well for the past few weeks there's been not much going on in my life. We had our fundraising concert with my band, The Late Boomers, on July 6th - it went really well and was a great concert, but now that band is on hiatus as one of the key members is a university professor and is now out of the country on Sabbatical for a year. My other band, Tin Pan Alley is waiting for our drummer to return from finishing rebuilding his cabin at Waskesiu that suffered major water damage over the winter, so it's also somewhat on hold. And there's a bit of a gap in my cake business right now as well - most people I've been doing cakes for seem to have birthdays or events in the first half of the year, so except for referrals that come up, I don't have any scheduled cakes right now until October. I've gone from insanely busy (see my last post) to almost nothing going on outside of work.

So I am taking this time to explore some solutions to productivity issues I'm having at work. The Wellbutrin helps - since I went back on it December my productivity and focus has been better, but I still don't process complex tasks as fast as the others in my department and I find distractions are very hard to refocus from after they happen. Also, when there's high volume and stress (which there's been a lot of lately because of short staffing due to holidays or illness) I get overwhelmed and shut down.

I had some long discussions and meetings with management in the past couple of weeks about my productivity and ended up telling them about my ADHD. I haven't told them until now as I was trying to find other solutions to keep up on my own, and most ADHD forums I belong to talk at length about the pros and cons of telling an employer as it could go either way and backfire. Either management or other employees think you are using it as an excuse, if management makes concessions (lower workload or less distractions) the other employees resent you for getting special treatment, some employers or co-workers who don't understand ADHD write you off as retarded or stupid and some companies just don't even want to deal with it and find ways within the law to fire or demote ADHD employees. It was a scary decision, and I still feel I am in new and uncharted waters.

My manager was somewhat understanding - he said it makes sense in a way because he was puzzled that someone with my education, knowledge and years of experience was having such trouble keeping up with the workload that the other underwriters are handling with no problem. He showed compassion and said my company is committed to helping employees reach their full potential, so he and the VP of Human Resources want to learn all they can about the disorder and see if there's any programs of tools they can get to help me. That's cool!!!

I've been doing more research myself since this all went down and I have been researching cognitive nuerotherapy type brain exercises (like the Brain Gym or the Dore (DDAT) Method) that use specific brain exercises and activities to reprogram how the brain works and can even regrow pathways in the brain and in essence fix the wiring of (or rewire) the ADHD brain. Dr. Hallowell and other leading ADHD experts have really endorsed these programs and witnessed or documented amazing results with them. The problem for those two programs is: 1) both programs are really expensive ($5000 plus) and 2) both have to be done in a office/clinic with a trained practitioner and there are no clinics or practitioners in my city. There is a Brain Gym practitioner in Regina, about a 2 1/2 hours drive south of me, but as the program requires weekly or bi-weekly visits for many months, that would be a lot of time and cost to travel, in addition to the high cost of the program itself. So it's just not feasible for me.

I kept researching and found a program called SharperBrain, developed by a Toronto doctor for ADHD as well as brain damage patients that is a comprehensive series of exercises done on a computer that retrains the brain using cognitive neurotherapy. He's got many years of peer reviewed research documenting amazing successes with ADHD children and adults. Being a computer program there are are no office visits needed, it can all be done at home in half hour sessions 3 to 5 times weekly and it is a fraction of the cost of the other two programs.

So I've ordered the program, it should be here in couple of days and I will start that as soon I as I get it and install it on my laptop. If I could rewire or reprogram my brain to focus better, reduce distractability, have better (faster) cognitive abilities to do complex tasks and be more organized and on top of things (all things this program has helped others with and what it was designed to do) then this could change my life! (I'm hoping...)

I will post updates here as I progress through the program. If it really works and can improve my brain, it's definitely something to write about in my upcoming ADHD book and it may even help me to complete that ongoing project/dream of writing and publishing a book.

So stay tuned for this continuing saga - this could be a turning point!

Crystal