....for me at least. Wake up: 6AM.... Get ready for one heck of a day at school. Get dressed, brush teeth--etc, then get my buddy out of his crate. Let him out to bathroom, brush his teeth, fur, feed him, then put his vest, leash, and harness on. Grab my 40 lb bookbag crammed with notes and textbooks, and head out the door, get my buddy, Mack, buckled in the car, and eat an energy bar on the way to school.
Wonder: Did I take my morning medicine? Y/N
If the answer is No, then I'm probably in trouble. By midmorning, a vague, persistent, dull pain will take root behind my eyes, and will refuse to budge. A few hours more, and the pain will seem to increase marginally, but other, bigger problems will take root--the problems walking, the involuntary movements will pick up into high gear, and with those, the vocalizatoins.
If I did take my meds, my first couple hours of classtime usually goes OK, plus or minus my stress levels rising due to my noise sensitivity. And even in IB classrooms, there is noise. Noise translates somewhere between my cochlea and the auditory processing areas of the brain as TIME FOR BIG RUSH OF STRESS. And when that begins, there's only 2 things to do: escape (ipod, leave the vicinty of the noises) or grin and bear it (refocus, pet Mack some...hope and pray I don't lose it until after I've gotten my notes down.) Lose what? My concentration. Lose what else? Control of most of my movements. What else? The ability to focus long enough between losing control of my movements to actually comprehend what gibberish my teacher is spouting and be able to ask intelligent, relevant questions on the topic.
So what is this losing concentration and control of most movements about? It is, of course, about my brain. And as an aside, the movements of my body and their effects on my academic work.
I have a cluster of neurological disorders, which affect my ability to concentrate on what I need to do, and control my movements and utterances. The chief two of my disorders are Attention Deficit Disorder (which is actually quite common) and Tourette Syndrome. Tourette's is much less common, although if someone has Tourette's, theyre quite likely to have AD(H)D. For me, the sum of what these two do to me is mentioned above, although very vaguely.
Tourette is my main source of impairment right now. Without having to worry about having tics, when I'm being too disruptive, etc, etc, I am btter at focusing...
My ADHD is double-edged; I love daydreaming, and daydream a lot, owing to the weird flights of fancy my mind takes...yet at the same time, my absent-minded nature makes focusing and organizaing and prioritizing things that I need to do rather difficult. It's pretty difficult to focus on one thing, an unforgiving math problem in my book, when 50 far more interesting topics keep popping in and out of my thoughts. Part of my distractability is normal teenage responsiblity-shirking, the other part is due to the bonafide neurological disorders I have.
