And the diagnosis ADD… that girl is me

So, I arrived… this time alone, just me.

The Adar Institute in Be’er Sheva for attention and concentration diagnosis…

I started with the TOVA test – a computerized test.

Kind of like a game.

A black screen with a tiny white dot on it.

On it, a large white rectangle flickers, containing a black square that alternates between appearing at the top and the bottom.

I was asked to press a button every time the black square appeared at the top.

The test lasts about 20 minutes, which felt like an eternity. Monotonous and boring don’t even begin to describe it. To successfully complete the test, I had to summon all the forces of the universe to my aid.

It was hard and felt like forever. I kept shifting in my chair, trying to change positions. I felt like I was dozing off and forcing myself to stay focused…

When the lovely woman accompanying me said there were 7 minutes left, I didn’t know whether to be happy or cry that it wasn’t over yet…

And finally… it ended.

Ugh…

From there, I moved to another room… this time alone in front of another computer screen, this time with a keyboard and mouse – the BRC test. The secretary explained to me that it’s a series of tasks, and before each task, instructions would appear.

Simple, right?!

The entire test lasts about 30 minutes…

13 stages in total… some of them repeat.

For example, a task where words were presented to me in sequence. Each time, one word appeared on the screen.

In the next task, I was asked to choose from 3 words which one had appeared in the word list.

If I’m not mistaken, I repeated this task 3 times throughout the entire test…

A task where numbers were presented to me, and I had to type them in order.

A path task… I had to successfully recreate a path, and only when I succeeded without mistakes could I move on to the next task.

And again… I kept shifting in my chair. Moving my head, shoulders. Right leg, left leg… trying hard not to fall asleep from boredom and to stay fully focused…

(Focused?!)

Finally, it ended.

Ugh…

Then I was asked to take a Ritalin pill…

I took it…

After a short wait, I met with the doctor, who already had the test results in hand.

The TOVA was less successful than the BRC.

So, I’ll retake it under the influence of Ritalin to see the differences.

We talked about my academic abilities as a child.

About my organizational skills as a child and as an adult.

About challenges in studies, work, routine, where I experienced difficulties. The topic of education naturally came up.

Where in life I avoided and chose to go in a different direction because of the difficulty…

It’s clear to me that from the moment my eldest son Noam was diagnosed and I was exposed to the understanding of attention and concentration issues and their effects, I already realized that I’m completely "disrupted." It took me back to the labels of my childhood. To conversations like "She has potential…"

To the high school years when, before every test, I would copy summaries over and over, trying to get something to stick in my memory so I could retrieve it during the test… (It didn’t happen!)

To the post-army studies.

I arrived mature and highly motivated, but the difficulty and subsequent failures didn’t take long to appear… so I recalculated my path again.

And again…

And again…

After a long conversation and a neurological examination, I went to retake the TOVA test.

This time, it was unbelievably easy…

I didn’t move in my chair.

I didn’t fall asleep… I felt completely alert and energetic.

I didn’t struggle at all…

It was just easy.

And the time passed quickly.

These days, I’m once again recalculating my path… starting to study a field that was once a dream, but every time I thought about pursuing it, I’d put the dream in a drawer and close it…

This time, I took action… I went for it… I got accepted… and I registered.

I came to get diagnosed – the diagnosis results:

ADD.

And I hope this time, success won’t take long to arrive.

Quality of life is not a dirty word.