I felt as if I was living the movie "A Beautiful Mind" when the reality of my ADHD hit. I was one year out of Orthodontic school, working for several doctors, living in my first real home - the stuff I had imagined I would have after graduation. At one job I wasn't required to do much of the thinking, as the staff had been trained to manage the patients, and basically act as the doctor. At the other office, the doctor had me doing the promotional stuff, building the website, and so forth, so I hadn't dedicated much time to learning his way of doing things.
The short version of the story is that I lost both jobs within 6 months. The first one, I basically kicked myself out by telling the doctor that I was considering a permanent job in another town. It didn't feel right not telling him. It was a mistake. It was a moment, like so many others before it, that my mouth exactly in sync with my brain, and no time to filter what I should and shouldn't say. He was very irritated and hurt. I hadn't considered that he had spent over 30K on marketing me, and getting his practice in a state that I wouldn't be able to resist purchasing. I was living in a parallel reality, or rather, a fantasy. From that moment forward he began to notice my faults, and ride me on getting better. I had just weeks earlier negotiated a daily salary which he was now unhappy to pay. Strange thing, as he pointed out things that I wasn't able to do that most associates were, I began to link that to moments in my Orthodontic school experience where I had been told "You are just not getting it!", and the hundreds of other hints that I had not fully understood. I had always felt deep down inside that I was going to be successful, even if I was the slowest at grasping orthodontics in the class. Then the pile-up of negative events began to accelerate:
1) My invisalign cases weren't looking right, and I didn't know how to fix them, and the older orthodontist had no idea - I was supposed to be the expert!
2) I realized that the other man I worked for made sure that I wasn't doing any of the initial exams. he was doing ALL of them himself!
3) I was tipped off (in a miracle chain of events) that I was going to lose my job with that same Doctor in 6 months time. I was humiliated and shocked. I owned a home, and now I was not going to have an income!
4) My confidence slipped down another level when I decided to start working at a cheap Orthodontic chain - Western Dental. They had me seeing 80 patients a day with 3 assistants. The place was 1.5 hours away in an area that I had never been. The staff did NOT understand orthodontics, and the guy who had been there before had not managed the practice well. I was in hell.
At this point the panic hit me. I remember driving home from my first full day of work in the new town with a fear that had wiped out most of my rational thought. I had just seen 80 patients, and didn't know what to do for them. They were messed up, and I didn't know how to fix their teeth.
Questions popped up everywhere: Why don't I know how to do this? Why is my brain feeling like it's going to explode? What am I going to do when the same people come back in 6 weeks and look just as bad, or worse than when I saw them last? Yet I had committed 4 days a week to this insane assylum. 4 days a week that hacked and hacked mercilessly at my confidence and ego. More memories came back from Orthodontic school: the feedback from my clinical instructors had always had a tinge of worry. I had learned that many had said privately that McDermott isn't getting it. Panic!!! Had I really spent half a million on my education, bought a house with the same cost, married to a beautiful woman, three sons, and no ability to do orthodontics? What was I going to do?
At this point the cycle of distorted thoughts took over my brain. I had very little time to make a plan because I was fearing what was to become of me. I spoke to my Bishop, who told me that I would be fine - I had a degree from an excellent school in Orthodontics. CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I DON'T HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I'M DOING??? My Dad and I decided that it was a problem of having too many patients. I was fresh out of school, and wasn't ready to see that many patients. I would sell my home first of all, and would have to quit the job.
This is a shortened version of the hellish February 2005 - August 2005. I had so many negative thoughts that I couldn't sleep at night. My wife would ask me in the morning how long I had slept, and I had to tell her the truth: an hour or two at most.
My hands were now shaking, sweaty, and hot. My face had a permanent frown. I wanted to lay on the couch - no, I wanted to disappear, to never exist...to never face the future of me letting my 3 sons down. Of letting my wife down. Of deceiving everyone, especially myself. It was somewhere in those dreadful days that my Mother came down to visit with my sister, who had her own troubles, and wanted to use the couch that I had been using for depression sessions. She brought every book on depression in our home library, and one called "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life". I was intrigued. I flipped through the chapters and found that each had a checklist of issues associated with that problem. When I read the checklist on ADD I knew my life would never be the same. For whatever reason, I had just figured out what was wrong with me. I showed the list to my wife - she agreed that I must have that condition. It was all there. That evening I asked a previous instructor from orthodontic school if she thought I could have ADD. She said "Absolutely! You were always listening to everyone's conversations, even when you were busy at work on your patients. You were easily distracted by anything." Then I carried the list on in my head: Blurts out things that I didn't mean to say, often repeats the same errors, poor observer of personal behavior. The positive things stuck as well, such as humorous, creative, and so forth, but didn't help me get past the diagnosis.
I told my counselor my discovery. She said "You were on the wrong medication during school" (I had been on Paxil for panic attacks). She bought in to the fact that I was incompetent, and encouraged me to sue the school at one point. That makes her sound pretty incompetent to me now, but I was pretty convincing, and scared to death of the bills that my father had co-signed for about 500K. Was I going to ruin him?
Eventually I had to stop my crazy job. it was going to kill me. I had already seen myself losing it on the way there, or on the way home, or doing something insane as my body wore down more and more. I had lost 20+ pounds, I was still not sleeping, and I was not thinking clearly about anything. My wife was amazing through it all - she DID believe that I might not ever practice Orthodontics again, but said that we would find SOME way to survive. That was SO humiliating, about the orthodontics, but I was amazed at her faith. I learned that I had not been drinking deep from the gospel waters, and had hit a true trial of my faith.
After quitting, I still had a few checks coming in from this crazy place - the one that was paying me $1300/day to work there. It was a lot of money, but I my sanity was the price I had paid for it. I remember going to my Bishop for advice, and to pay my tithing. It was amazing to know I was experiencing the hardest chapter of my life: losing my job, my home, my respect, my income, and so forth. I wrote the check out for tithing - I knew that there were blessings that would come if I paid it, even though I was wondering how soon I would have to declare bankruptcy. We lived on food from the church - how humbling for me!
Still, I had the DX of ADD. I was referred to a wonderful Psychiatrist who started me on Remeron so that I could start sleeping. It was amazing - I slept! Although i was depressed when I woke up the next morning, unwilling to face the sunshine coming through the window, I felt a bit of my mental faculties recovering.
(Mine to be continued as well...) Thanks for the inspiration Four Acres!
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