It's Personal...

[Maj]

Hmm, 3 shaded marks in section A, and a few in B. Probably a good idea to get a check up. I've wondered for a while whether I've had some sort of psychiatric disorder (it sometimes hurts my brain to half ass things even when that's the rational thing to do, often making me either spend way too much time on minute details or avoid doing them entirely).

I occasionally freelanced for a daycare center where I know a psychiatrist. I'll give her a call. Thanks Maj.

You're welcome. In Ess' case, they also asked a lot of questions about his behavior as a child. I asked his mom to write about it and send it to me. The assessment was not enough on its own, but given the info from his mom and the fact his son has ADHD (genetic component), the docs were pretty confident in their diagnosis.

Best of luck to you. At the very minimum, maybe you can find a way to get some sleep.

[radthemad4]

Bah, my depression has become bad enough that I'm missing work. I guess I should get medicated. I don't like depression meds, they make me put on weight and make me sleepy. I've been doing very well about watching my diet lately and been losing weight, sucks that I have to take pills that reverse that to function...

I feel that. I have to choose bipolar meds or treating my adhd and chronic pain, and the one that makes me not try to kill myself wins, of course. Best of luck

Yeah, dieting is hard. It feels like the world is always trying its best to throw appetizing (but terribly unhealthy) food at you. That taking ridiculously long to get noticeable results. Having it thwarted because of meds sucks. Best of luck to you too momo.

Full support to you, rad. I had the same sort of thing when I was younger and it's horrible, especially the feeling of helplessness of watching myself as I ended up not working.

The two things that help the most are sleep and exercise. Unfortunately they're also the two hardest things to do.

The website Captain Awkward has a lot of excellent advice on this sort of thing.

After my last post, I just slept for a seven or eight hours, went running for the first time in ages, ate some cereal and then spent roughly nine hours (excluding 5 minute and 15 minute breaks) working and submitted something incomplete but substantial considerably late, before sleeping some more once I got home. The professor wasn't exactly happy with it, but I think I rolled some decent bluff checks and managed to be somewhat convincing in feigning illness. Apparently some others hadn't done it at all so I think my odds of passing this course are looking good thanks to the whole bell curve thing. The sleep and exercise feel like they've really helped, and I'll try to keep that up in the future.

My personal life hack for this is the to-do list - to which I've added a little tweak. I also put some leisure activities on it (like "play a five-year stretch on Europa Universalis IV")

It's a little more motivating working through the list when there's stuff that isn't work or tasks on it, and I usually manage to actually do most of the boring stuff before hitting the fun stuff because my brain wants to keep the list interesting and engaging.

For long projects, I also think it's important to put some granularity in your list - either break down your assignment into specific tasks, or if you can't put "work an hour on the assignment" on the list five times instead of just "do the assignment".

I saw your post a while back and did that. In the end I've got a whole bunch of 25 minute work sessions crossed out in front of me. I think it helped a lot.

You're welcome. In Ess' case, they also asked a lot of questions about his behavior as a child. I asked his mom to write about it and send it to me. The assessment was not enough on its own, but given the info from his mom and the fact his son has ADHD (genetic component), the docs were pretty confident in their diagnosis.

Best of luck to you. At the very minimum, maybe you can find a way to get some sleep.

I don't normally have trouble sleeping (unless occasional excessive procrastination counts). I was freaking out over this at the time.

But I will schedule an appointment for a check up. If I've got ADHD or some other disorder probably best to find out ASAP. Thanks.

From now on I'll try to spend more time studying daily (and sleep and exercise). However, I've had moments like this before where I went "That's it, I'm turning my life around", only to regress after a while. This time I've got some concrete info (sleep and exercise), and getting a checkup, but any tips on keeping up with it?

[Maj]

...but any tips on keeping up with it?

Ess can't take medication right now, so this is a huge deal for him. He uses timers on his tablet to prompt him for everything... Because given the opportunity, he will wake up, turn on Hearthstone, and forget to eat breakfast, help get Giovanni ready for school, work, take his medication, etc.

[Maxus]

From now on I'll try to spend more time studying daily (and sleep and exercise). However, I've had moments like this before where I went "That's it, I'm turning my life around", only to regress after a while. This time I've got some concrete info (sleep and exercise), and getting a checkup, but any tips on keeping up with it?

Catch yourself when you regress. It sounds like a bitch to do, and it is, but sometimes you've got to force yourself to go do something responsible. As I type this, I really don't want to go into work. I mean REALLY don't want to go into work.

My ADHD has gotten more manageable as I get older. And I've spent the past few years constantly working at blending in and doing stuff.

It's actually a pain at this stage because now if I say "Mildly autistic and ADHD", people don't believe me.

[Koumei]

Something I like about my tafe course* is that the website has everything in list form, with a little progress bar that fills up as you tick things off. Even just "download and read this" lets you then tick it and work on the progress bar. Add achievements and you basically have a modern PC game.

*I could tell of the things I don't like, but that is your standard "understaffed, badly organised place" expanded into a massive rant. Feel free to just extrapolate your own.

[Maj]

From now on I'll try to spend more time studying daily (and sleep and exercise). However, I've had moments like this before where I went "That's it, I'm turning my life around", only to regress after a while. This time I've got some concrete info (sleep and exercise), and getting a checkup, but any tips on keeping up with it?

Catch yourself when you regress. It sounds like a bitch to do, and it is, but sometimes you've got to force yourself to go do something responsible. As I type this, I really don't want to go into work. I mean REALLY don't want to go into work.

From my outsider's perspective, ADHD comes off to me like a mis-programming in the reward center of your brain. It gives you the dopamine feedback you want for all wrong things. And it doesn't reinforce you when you've done something right, but the thing you did isn't your "vice," so to speak.

So that whole thing about catching yourself? You might not feel awesome for doing it. So tell yourself out loud that you did well. Talk some smack about your awesomeness in a mirror. If you keep doing it, you can trick yourself into reinforcing accomplishment for the task. And then you'll fight doing it less.

[Koumei]

Alternatively, find a way to trigger the reward mechanism whenever you do something good. So follow (studying/exercising/not punching people) with (chocolate/opiates/masturbation). Some of these are ill-advised in certain situations. I'll let you decide on these for yourself.

[Maj]

There's also a supplement that's helpful (Mucuna pruriens), but get a diagnosis first. You don't want to be treating the wrong thing.

[radthemad4]

...but any tips on keeping up with it?

Ess can't take medication right now, so this is a huge deal for him. He uses timers on his tablet to prompt him for everything... Because given the opportunity, he will wake up, turn on Hearthstone, and forget to eat breakfast, help get Giovanni ready for school, work, take his medication, etc.

Something I like about my tafe course* is that the website has everything in list form, with a little progress bar that fills up as you tick things off. Even just "download and read this" lets you then tick it and work on the progress bar. Add achievements and you basically have a modern PC game.

*I could tell of the things I don't like, but that is your standard "understaffed, badly organised place" expanded into a massive rant. Feel free to just extrapolate your own.

I'll try a daily to do list. Doing it progress bar style sounds like it could work.

Catch yourself when you regress. It sounds like a bitch to do, and it is, but sometimes you've got to force yourself to go do something responsible. As I type this, I really don't want to go into work. I mean REALLY don't want to go into work.

From my outsider's perspective, ADHD comes off to me like a mis-programming in the reward center of your brain. It gives you the dopamine feedback you want for all wrong things. And it doesn't reinforce you when you've done something right, but the thing you did isn't your "vice," so to speak.

So that whole thing about catching yourself? You might not feel awesome for doing it. So tell yourself out loud that you did well. Talk some smack about your awesomeness in a mirror. If you keep doing it, you can trick yourself into reinforcing accomplishment for the task. And then you'll fight doing it less.

I'll give that a shot. It sounds like it could work.

[Ancient History]

http://imgur.com/a/w0eOb#0

[Red_Rob]

http://imgur.com/a/w0eOb#0

Very nice. Any chance of any internal shots of panels that you found particularly memorable, or would that hit any copyright snags?

[Ancient History]

I don't know about copyright, but it took me forever just to get everything out to do that much, and I finally got it all put back again.

[Koumei]

So my grandfather is here, and the dry retching has started again. As it is, even trying a mouthful of food triggers it, and he's probably dehydrating. He does have Maxolon tablets, but the problem is they won't actually stay down long enough to take effect. Even the taste of them apparently triggers it.

The underfunded* medical people will, when they have the chance, come around to try injecting it into him, and if that works, they may need to do that regularly so he can actually eat and drink properly or for that matter stand up.

For what it's worth, they have people puzzling over the base problem and all, so I don't see much use in asking you guys for other treatment options that the medical teams might have overlooked. Just... I dunno. Putting it out there as the closest equivalent to talking to someone about it. He's suffering more than Dad was in his final months.

*Yay, budget cuts to health. Thanks, Abbott!

[Prak]

Am I misrembering, or aren't you trained as a chemist (or was that something you were looking at but never did)? If so, is it perhaps possible that they can just give you the maxolon and you could help him with injections?

[Koumei]

Someone came over and not only gave him the injection, but also left some extras here so that we can do it for a few days if it seems to be working.

And I was trained to be a pharmacy assistant, which is the lowest rank in a pharmacy. If employed, I wouldn't even be allowed to handle the "opens the safe we keep the Dangerous Drugs of Addiction in" key, similarly would not be allowed to give medical advice (as opposed to information - I could say "Well paracetamol can relieve various forms of pain and also reduces fevers, but ibuprofen and aspirin are anti-inflammatory painkillers" but couldn't say "Oh, it's a sprain that has swollen up? Yeah, you want ibuprofen for that").

In other words, that's not the kind of level where I can just go pick up prescription medication on someone else's behalf, let alone hospital medication (as basically all drugs become once you need to inject them).

I also started studying Bio and Chem again, with the idea of getting into a proper Bachelor of Pharmacy, but I decided it was not for me. Partly because of the difficulty with sitting down and studying, partly because I couldn't get my head around a lot of the Chemistry stuff, and partly because the classes tended to finish a few hours before I normally wake up.

[Prak]

Ah, gotcha. At least someone did come by and leave extras. Hope it helps.

[fectin]

Many people swear by pot for exactly that problem.
I can't personally vouch for that, or speak to what your local law allows though.

[Koumei]

Well, that hasn't helped, so now they've tried injecting a different anti-nausea medication. And they're arranging a trip to hospital if need be, so they can try finding a better solution, and also to put him on a drip just to get his fluids up.

That said, he does eat some solids (which stay down), and he seems to be retaining some amount of his fluids. Basically, it's "a major discomfort that warrants treating, not a dire health emergency". The retching isn't going to kill him, the Amyloidosis will do that.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Yikes, Koumei. My thoughts with you on this tough time.

[Maj]

[radthemad4]

Sorry Koumei. It sounds like you're all making the best of the time you've got left though. Hope you make some good memories.

[Koumei]

Yeah, I've spent the majority of my life here, and he has also spent the majority of my life here, so there are plenty of memories and we've been close. We see eye to eye when it comes to dogs, religion and pessimism. And before this, he pretty much did a lap around the country for 12 months, travelling in a pretty nice campervan. He's not the "sit in a rocking chair" kind. So although it's hard seeing him suffer, I'll always remember him as he was six months ago, taking the "Be completely alive until you're completely dead" approach to life.

He also gives great advice.
"I was wondering if you could give advice on-"
"Of course. Use a large calibre Magnum, that should get the job done."

[Shrapnel]

For those of you not living in the country of Boston and the lesser bits of Massachusetts, today was election day. Well, primaries, actually, which have about as much significance and relevance as the vice-president.

What you may not know is that I work these elections as an Inspector (we are the dudes who sit at the check-in tables, hand out ballots, put up signs, etc.), and have done for a few years now. Working elections tends to be gloriously tedious and dull, since most of the time you're just sitting there not doing much except for when there's voters, and they typically come in small numbers in drips and drabs, with turnout not usually being very high, unless it's an election people actually care about (mainly Presidential ones, and occasionally Mayoral, but never, ever primaries). The average turnout for my polling location tends around the 250 mark. That's not a lot of people when you consider that the polls are open from 6am to 8pm, and there are often hours-long stretches in between waves of voters.

Hence, I got up today at the unholy hour of 5am to get to the poll at 6am, and then stood, sat, and stood some more for about 12 hours while people decided who they were going to vote for in November.

I also got to give out "I Voted" stickers, which is the most important part of the democratic process.

My mind is a bit mushier than general because of all this.

[Prak]

I would imagine they pay you for this? Probably minimum wage, but still pay. Do supervisors forbid you from reading/browsing the internet/otherwise busying your mind when there are no voters?

[Stahlseele]

Over here in germany you are getting paid quite well for doing that stuff AND your usual job HAS to let you go and do it without docking pay or holidays.