Testing on Friday

Greetings.

I'm going in for testing for ADHD on Friday. They set up a 180 minute appointment after my first interview. Anybody have any idea what tests they're likely to give me?

I'm 60 and just took an early retirement. The frustration of the working world got to be more than I could handle and I wasn't at all satisfied with my performance. The day to day just got too difficult.

I intend to apply for disability and try to draw my social security early. Does anyone have any knowledge about people having success in doing that?

Good luck, probably a full Psychological evaluation. Ink blot tests, IQ, memory, emotional questions.

Thanks. No ink blots, but three hours of testing.

Results on the 28th.

Memory stuff? Repeat 4, 5, 6-digit numbers backwards? That kind of thing? Thematic Aptitude Test where you say what's happening in a picture? I had a series of tests like that that were kind of fun but mine was informal; my T at the time was taking a course so had me be a guinea pig :-) I'd really be excited about the 28th and hearing what they thought they'd learned, are you? Good luck.

Oh goodness.......we had multi-colored blocks that had to be arranged in a way that would match a picture shown.

We had pictures of various groups of shapes and had to pick out a picture of the one that would come next in the series.

One made me laugh. He said, "Ok, I'm going to say six numbers and letters and I want you to repeat them back to me with the numbers in numerical order and the letters in alphabetical order."

I just started laughing......yeah, like there's a chance I'd be able to actually DO that.

We had a 20 minute computer test and had to click when a certain shape came up.......over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

We had many verbal questions on words and math and general knowledge (I blew the one on the capital of Italy and said, "Naples," I just blurted it out for some reason I don't know why).

We had five pictures and had to put them in the order that we thought showed the story being told.

We had a written test that was obviously to find out if we were totally bonkers.

And we had what was clearly an ADHD screening that had a lot of questions relating to physical hyperactivity (which I don't have).

All in all, pretty exhausting.

Yes, I am excited to hear about results on the 28th.

Hey, Naples may not be the capital now but at least you named an important Italian city? I'm taking a European History course and we're starting the unification of Italy 1850's/60s and it's confusing stuff.

I've always been proud of my memory, have a 99% "sight" memory (I'd make a good factory inspector), can tell you approximately on what page a reference is, know which "side" and where on the page and how far into the book, that sort of thing.

The questions I had trouble with were when "common" sayings were given and one had to explain what they meant! One doesn't really think about how to explain what "a rolling stone gathers no moss" means and why you'd use it. LOL I muffed one of them I remember but fortunately don't remember which one. But I felt so dumb because it takes so many more words to explain and here you have something so neatly packaged rather than bumbling like I felt I was being. It just felt so wrong.

Interesting.

I envy you your memory.

I think I got all the sayings right, but most of them stopped me in my tracks and forced me to think really hard.

Remembering the spoken numbers and letters was almost impossible.....one of the curses of ADHD is a poor working memory and executive function.....so, I guess I was true to form.

My husband has been through a number of tests looking for cognitive / brain disorders as part of his ADD screening. Like you, there is no hyperactivity issue. His tests sounded similar to yours, and in the end we still don't know what to do about his thought patterns and behaviors that get in his way, but we do know that his brain works properly aside from the ADD.

We're going to focus more on the anxiety aspects of his psychology than the ADD for now. He is on Strattera and Lexapro, and just added as-needed Klonopin. He has an ADD coach who is terrific and much more affordable than our Pdoc (who he also sees once a week). She is helping him with strategies and with learning to recognize when he is 'blocked' by irrational thought patterns (which are fairly predictable once you get to know him).

Good luck to you DenVII