Not the road less traveled

Ever since this mind boggling realization that ADD was real and it was not my son's fault but a real malady, I have been on the search for a cure. I want my son to live a long and happy life free of any disability that would diminish his enjoyment of this gift we call life. We have seen many doctors, counselors, psychiatrists, therapists, educational specialists, neurologists, neuropsychologists, read books, gone to seminars, joined CHADD and gone to meetings, and even started a parents help group for the local area not served by CHADD, gone to AA and alanon meetings to try to stem a natural desire to self medicate and control the symptoms that the doctors are failing to alieve. I even came up with some cute T-shirts designed to show my son it was okay to have ADD and start accepting it rather that fight it and deny it because the books and tapes available to do this just were not getting the message accross. It is through more than a decade of this windy often rocky road that I have come to beleive some key fundamental things regarding ADD. ADD is an umbrella term that encompasses many different maladies, and to top it off, the list of comorbid diseases that often accompany ADD are enough to confuse all but the most knowledgable and highly specialized doctors around. In some uncomplicated cases people respond quite well to medicines and psychotherapy. Some just need a diet change or allergies addressed properly. For more difficult cases brain scans seem to be the only hope for an effective solution to the various aggrevious symptoms. In the future we will not so much address these problems as ADD som much as we will more specifically diagnose the problems to various specific parts of the brain through brain scans. This is fast becoming a more effective solution for such a confusing problem. This personally has been the most miraculous breakthrough in our entire ordeal. Finally we got answers to our most perplexing dilemmas. The tools are now becoming available and the experts in the field are earning more credibility from the medical community all the time. (no small feat at that!) Soon even the medical insurance companies will cover these proceedures and we all will feel like it has become commonplace to deal with mental infirmities just like we deal with the physical ones, which by the way we are far from conquering. Psychology is exiting the stone age, and we are now looking at the organ involved and understanding so much more. I am glad this was available for my son.

And along came a teacher

One day, out of the blue while I was picking up my son early from school because of something he did or took or hit, his teacher walked outside with us and closed the door behind, leaving the classroom temporarily teacher-free. She looked into my eyes and probably sensing my loss for direction offered some advice in one brief sentence that changed my life completely. She said, "Meds have worked miracles for children with ADD" and with that she kindly smiled and returned to the room like a Genie summoned back to her bottle.
All the short walk to work with my son I could not get those words out of my head. Was there something wrong with my son? Did my son Have ADD? When I got to work I called our pediatrician and booked an appointment. He gave my son a physical and I asked him if he knew anything about ADD. He said he did and he gave me some questinoaires to fill out, have my sons teacher fill out, and then return with them completed at my son's next appointment. There were a over a hundred questions and you answered them with, "never, sometimes, and frequently." I was pretty shocked by the questionaire. There was so many things that my son did that were on those sheets of paper I could hardly believe it. I was even more amazed when the forms were filled out by both myself and my sons teacher. Identical responses to all the questions, and the ones that we responded to positively (almost all of them) they were almost all, "frequently." The funny thing was that during the doctor visits my son was pretty well behaved. He didn't even fidget much. He looked so calm and cute and happy. Probably because of this the doctor then referred us to a psychologist. We visited her a couple of times and she prescribed some ritalin after she was sure my son was ADD. After a couple of visits he would start to climb the walls and it was then I learned that for short periods of time in new environments an ADD person is so stimulated with the new surroundings that they can appear to be having a "honeymoon" from their symptoms. I balked at the ritalin thing, not wanting to drug my son, and asked about alternatives. She suggested exercise, behavior charts and the Feingold Diet. Our journey had just begun.