ugh, pre-season tried to kill me again

Just coming up for air after the WORST time of year, which can be summed up by the P’s;

-Pre-season

-Physicals

-Paperwork

-Practice, practice, practice whenever the coaches want, multiple times/day

This time of year needs no explanation if you’re an athletic trainer, it blows. It is the equivalent to the annual visit to the lady doctor (sorry you dont have an equivalent dudes -read sarcasm) it sucks, you hate it, you know its coming every year, but it cannot be avoided. For those of you who aren’t card carrying members of the khaki mafia, here’s a brief explanation.

August, that magical time of year when the fall athletes return, practices begin, and fall sports across America get rolling. Seems pretty simple, but behind the scenes athletic trainers everywhere are questioning their sanity in choosing this profession.

Before pre-season practices can begin, athletes must have a physical. Before they can have a physical, they must fill out a health questionnaire and submit any pertinent past medical records (yay alliteration). This is all communicated to said athletes 2-3 months in advance, multiple times. Their wonderfully dedicated athletic trainers also waste spend hours in the summer checking who has submitted, and who hasnt and sending multiple reminder emails. This begins the paperwork wrangling season….. So when 30-70% of the athletes show up on day 1 having submitted none or less than required amounts of paperwork, things go downhill. Coaches expect practices to start yesterday, explaining that Senior Starting Goalie didnt do required paperwork and now we cannot do physical SHOCKINGLY does not result in said Senior being yelled at by coach, but the athletic trainer, whom clearly devised this whole paperwork and physical malarky just to delay pre-season and ipso-facto coaches life and everyones fun. This is the tip of the iceberg, as freshman have a whole slew of other requirements, blood work, EKG, physical with physician. So the fun-ruining AT spends their day sorting through list after list, checking who has done what, who is missing what, who is cleared, who is not cleared. Oh and this is done on top of our normally time friendly duties of dealing with every ache, pain, hangnail, de-convincing WebMD Cancer diagnosis of our entire roster, and the coach asking “what do you mean so and so cant do the run test? I know They had a drunken ATV accident 3 weeks ago they decided not to tell you about and were hospitalized, but they have to pass this run test today, it is crucial.” All while being yelled at by coach on whos cleared, the physician for why your athlete doesnt have their sickle cell result in, the athlete for why its not their fault since they decided not to check email over the summer/mom said she faxed it/my doctor at home said I’m fine so I figured I didnt have to do your paperwork too. Oh and I forgot to mention, this happens for 10,12,14 hours per day, 7 days a week for a month straight. The hours at work in a day dont really matter though as once home we continue to receive dozens of emails, texts, and phone calls of all the bullcrap listed above. Ohhhhh and one MORE thing, after 2 weeks of this with fall sports, the REST of the athletes come back mid-preason, and the process begins again, so repeat all the above BS x2-4 depending on how many other rosters you have while you’re trying to survive fall sport pre-season. So perhaps this provides a reasonable explanation if you have ever interacted with an AT during this time of year and theyve been less than warm and fuzzy. So next time you watch your favorite fall college sports team, think of how amazing it is that everyone is on the field, because the majority of athletes try REALLY hard to not be medically cleared.

This is a challenging time of year for any AT, but hot damn those of us with limited executive processing skills are holding on by a thread. My brain does not posses the ability for linear thought or organization, so the desperate attempt to keep track of the thousands of pieces of information results in the following strategies and subsequent results;

• The typical amount of piles and sticky notes littering my desk multiplying by 1000= if I cant see it, it doesnt exist so if its not on the top of the pile its forgotten.
• Writing reminders on my hands= accidentally washing reminders off my hands
• Setting reminders on my phone= Leaving phone somewhere and not hearing reminders
• Deliberately forcing myself to sit down to ONLY check records and send emails= Internet, so much Internet.
  

  This aint the half of it….. Right on David Sipress

Despite all the above sub-par strategery,  all the work manages to get done. However I am now physically and mentally exhausted because I essentially have to do things 2 and 3 times and expend farrrrr more energy than my co-workers, and I continue to have weird ass dreams about physicals and paperwork. But its over, for now….. Until next fall pre-season you jerk

ADHD, ATC

Holy crap, I actually did it

Well I finally pulled the trigger. After several months of kicking this idea around in my head, I finally made this blog.

Why? Who the heck knows why ideas pop into my head, where they come from, or why some stick and others (usually the really good, important, and intelligent ones) flutter away. But some appear they’re stuck until I do something about them, or get bored. In this instance, I think perhaps this is my brain’s way of trying to make sense of this fairly recent diagnosis/revelation/ explanation. Bear with me, I am no writer and I have ADHD (duh its in the title……), so my ability to ramble and wander off on tangents is pretty legendary. If you’re expecting perfect grammar, punctuation, organized thoughts or flow of writing, well then you’re pretty much like everyone my entire life and are going to be disappointed. If you’re a fellow member of the ADHD tribe, no explanation needed. So here goes a brief attempt at an explanation for why;

About 1 year ago, I was diagnosed as having ADHD. As an adult of almost 30, being told you have ADHD initially makes you go “no way, you’re an idiot and terrible at your job. Where’d you get that MD in Psychiatry, at the toilet store?” (First warning, movie/TV show quotes and references will abound, I can’t help it, and believe it or not I actually filter approximately 98% of the ones that pop into my head. So deal with it). Most of us, myself included heard ADHD and picture the well established, grossly inaccurate and diagnosis-delaying stereotype; hyper-active adolescent boy, bouncing in his seat while doing horribly in school. So like the majority of people who are diagnosed that look nothing like this, our initial reaction is one of disbelief because like most people, we bought into the stereotype.  Weve also spent our entire lives whether we were aware of it or not, desperately trying to be as “normal” as possible, believe the people who judge us, and to hide as much of the ADHD as possible, but thats a story for another day.

I am not an adolescent boy, nor did I do horribly in school. I am an adult female (spoiler alert!! Yep those of us sans weiner do indeed have ADHD you jerk-faces) who while not wowing anyone academically, possesses both undergraduate and graduate degrees, AND is pretty successfully gainfully employed as a staff athletic trainer at a Division 1 school (which shall remain unnamed to protect the ability for me to blab away without fear of ridicule, sorry to disappoint). But wait a minute? People with ADHD can’t function in school, there’s no way you could’ve made it through college 2 times, you’re a big faker looking for meds arent you? False. I did not seek out this diagnosis, nor did I initially want any medications, I was actually in a bit of denial/disbelief for a period of time. So I did what I usually do when faced with questions, to the internet!!! Diving through the wormhole of the interweb, I after hours of watching squirrel videos soon began discovering that the notion of ADHD I had in my head was false, and I was reading many signs/symptoms/traits that felt a little too familiar for comfort. Females do have ADHD, the signs and symptoms are very very different from boys, and many are not diagnosed until later in life. OK sounds like me…. But I’m still not convinced. Female’s with ADHD are often called tomboys, chatty cathy’s, will not always show academic issues at all, and many get good grades. Hmmm OK a little creepily accurate, but still not gonna believe it. But then I stumbled upon personal accounts from fellow adults who were diagnosed later in life, specifically females, and the reality hit me in the face. It was if I was looking in a mirror, that someone was reading my mind or reciting my life. It was reading these people’s first hand accounts, hearing them describe in unsettling detail exact thoughts I have, things I have done, things I struggle with and things that were told to them that I finally began to understand what this meant, and that everything made some weird kind of sense. I finally had some context to begin to understand why part of me had always felt different or defective, and without those people’s personal stories and accounts, I would not have been able to begin to try and make sense out of the mess that it felt my life and brain had become.

So after that failure at an attempt at brevity, here are the Cliff’s Notes of the 3 reasons for this blog:

1. To in some way contribute to the personal stories out there that helped me accept who I am and what this diagnosis means and doesn’t mean, and maybe provide the same to someone else.

2. To attempt to sort out my own jumbled thoughts, experiences and feelings about what all this means moving forward, and how to continue to figure some stuff out and try to function as a viable adult. (key word try)

3. I came to the realization that the profession of Athletic Training is a PERFECT profession for fellow ADHD’rs, and even though Ive never met anyone who admits diagnosis, there have GOT to be a ton of us out there. I cannot be the only one, so here’s to throwing some radio signals out into space and hoping for fellow tribe members to hear it.

Thats the basic nuts and bolts. The journey is young, and far, far from over and even though many things are better, each day still brings with it struggles and frustrations. So well see where this blog experiment goes.

Until next time……

The ADHD ATC