ADHD Test

Thank you for calling our clinic!  Before you schedule your first appointment, please follow this link and create your Patient Portal Account.  We request you finish all steps before calling our clinic.

Step 1:  Fill out your name

Step 2:  Fill out your date of birth

Step 3:  Fill out all of your insurance information from the card you keep in your wallet – of course you totally know where your wallet is and you haven’t misplaced it, right?  You have?  Well, go find it. We’ll wait thirty minutes while you ransack the house and car.  Okay, do you have it?  Well, fill it in.

Step 4:  Fill out more information about…. about something.

Step 5:  No, for reals, go back and finish step 4.  You can’t skip it.

Step 6:  Do you have any new email?  You should check.

Step 7:  That’s not what Step 6 said.  Go back and check it again.  Speaking of checks, did that one check clear your bank yet?  Better go check it out before you bounce a check. Heh.  CHECK it out before you bounce a CHECK… was that a pun?   Is it a pun if you use the word “check” twice? No?  I wonder what that’s called?  Wait, follow through on the bank thing.  You really need to see if you have to transfer money.  If your account overdrafts The Bean’s gonna be mad.

Step 8:  Stupid.  You  were thinking of The Bean and accidentally logged into his account.  Log out and log back in to your own account.

Step 9:  We didn’t say log into Facebook – log into Wells Fargo.

Step 10:  Why are you logged into Wells Fargo?  Was there a reason? Man, the browser is slow – how long has it been since you closed it out and restarted it?  A day?  Two days?  And why do you have 19 tabs open at the same time?  Better close all tabs and restart it.

Step 11:  Wait!  Wait!  What happened to that thingie you were filling out?  CRAP.  It didn’t save.

Step 12:  Thank you for logging in to your Patient Portal Account.  We request you finish all steps before scheduling your first appointment.  Please fill out your name.

Step 13:  Fill out your date of birth.

Step 14:  Fill out your insurance informa—Wait… where did you put your wallet?  It was just here.

[Twenty-five minutes later]

Hooray!  Thank you for creating your Patient Portal Account!  Please click on the following link and answer some important questions before your appointment!


Step 1:  Please complete the ASRS-V1.1

Step 2:  What the heck is an ASRS-V1.1?  Better Google that.

Step 3.  Wow, cool.  Better Google that further.

Step 4:  Why do you have 17 tabs open already?  Close some of them.

Step 5:  CRAP – NOT THAT ONE….. too late.

Step 6:  Log in.  AGAIN.

Step 7:  Holy crap – how many survey/test thingies do they want you take?  There’s, like, 9 or 10 of these things.  Never mind, just click on one of them.  It doesn’t matter how many there are – just do one at a time.

  • Question 1: How often do you have trouble wrapping up the final details of a project, once the challenging parts have been done?  Never?  Rarely?  Sometimes? Often? Very Often?
  • Question 2: How often do you have difficulty getting things in order when you have to do a task that requires organization?  Never?  Rarely?  Sometimes? Often? Very Often?
  • How often do you have problems remembering appointments or obligations?  Never?  Rarely?  Sometimes? Often? Very Often?
  • How often do you make careless mistakes when you have to work on a boring or difficult project?  Never?  Rarely? Sometimes? Often? Very Often?
  • How often do you have difficulty keeping your attention when you are doing boring or repetitive work?  Never?  Rarely?  Sometimes? Often? Very Often?












Step 8:  OMG, can you just focus?  For like 5 minutes?  Please?

  • How often do you have difficulty waiting your turn in situations when turn taking is required?  Never?  Rarely?  Sometimes? Often? Very Often?
  • How often do you have difficulty concentrating on what people say to you, even when they are speaking to you directly?  Never?  Rarely?  Sometimes? Often? Very Often?
  • How often are you distracted by activity or noise around you?  Never?  Rarely?  Sometimes? Often? Very Often?
  • How often do you misplace or have difficulty finding things at home or at work?  Never?  Rarely?  Sometimes? Often? Very Often?

And now you know why I’ve never seen anyone for help with my ADHD.

Bubbles the FreeRange Kitty

I keep wanting to blog about the clinic, and I want to get it all out while it’s still fresh in my head.

Needless to say, I had the world’s most incredible time… and in addition to having the time of my life, I learned so much my brain hurt.  In some areas of how I approach horses I experienced a completely revolutionary shift in thinking… which was both weird and awesome.

I have a ton of pictures to go through – I’m only about halfway through going through them, and I have over 50 “favorites”.

I even took a bunch of notes on the long drive home, so I know exactly what I want to write about.

And then I woke up on Tuesday, physically exhausted but happy and ready to write….

And a freak accident occurred, and we lost our kitten Bubbles.

Even though he was still young, he was just an AWESOME cat.  He was one of those one-in-a-million cats.

I mean, we drove him to the DragonMonkey’s  preschool for show and tell and handed him around to twenty different preschoolers, and he never even complained, or tried to wriggle away.

That’s a pretty awesome cat.

On the one hand I’m just incredibly sad, although I’m not as devastated as I could be… mainly because when I lost my best friend (also another incredible cat) when I was in my early 20s,  I spent about three months just going through the motions of life, feeling like I had a hole where my heart used to be…. and I realized how ridiculous that was.

Our pets do not live as long as we do.  We live 80 years.  They live about 15 years.

I knew I couldn’t survive having my heart destroyed every 10 or 15 years, and I made a conscious decision to not lose myself completely in any of my pets again, at least not the shorter lived ones.  Oh, I still love them passionately, but I just don’t let myself completely go with them.  In the back of my mind I realize I’m going to outlive them.

Hey, maybe that’s not the healthiest way to approach it, but it’s what I had to do to keep myself from flinging myself off a bridge if I ever lost another pet.

Which I guess is why it surprised me that it hurt so much when Bubbles passed.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – he was an incredible little cat, and I bottle fed him from the time he was about 5 days old.  Once they were old enough his sister found a home with my very good friend here in town, and we kept him. 

So, anyways, before I go on and post anything about the clinic, I just need to take a moment to say goodbye.  I kept trying to just keep it to myself, because I didn’t feel like writing about it, but the sadness was seeping into my clinic posts, so I realized I needed to do this.

Miss you, Bubbles.  You really were the best of kitties.  I’ll see you again someday.