Recently I had an experience helping my mom learn the basics of her new computer. For those that know my mom, the thought of this is quite amusing. ;) She tries so hard and I admire her determination in trying to master email and the new computer. It was challenging for both of us, since I was walking her through it....over the phone. After the experience was over, then it caused me to reflect a little...
My issues with distraction and inattention have become more frequent than I realize since the brain surgery. Often ADHD and focus difficulties have a bad reputation in society and even in the world of medicine. The issue has gone from one extreme to the other in frequency of being diagnosed and treated. Over diagnosing and then not treating.....the extremes go back and forth. Somehow I believe that the patients get lost in the midst. I think this has been the case for me until recently.
I think in my case (and in a lot of patients) that attention issues are the last thing to receive attention. For me, it has been an afterthought. Instead of noticing that my attention problems are the likely cause of many other symptoms, we treat it the exact opposite. (I will keep you updated as to how this progresses.) :)
How does this tie in with my mom you ask? She struggles with the basics of a computer. I mean the REAL BASICS! For example, where to type the "www line" as she says. She was having difficulty signing into her email account on her new computer, so I had her describe for me what she was seeing. Instead of automatically noticing what you and I would see, she verbally told me what was getting her attention first. Her descriptions were interesting.
Picture with me the signon screen of a major email sight like yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc. We think that it is clearly obvious what to do, but not to my mom. She describes for me what she sees on the monitor. "I see a "Web Search" and then a blank white space.", "Well, a blinking red box telling me about a membership for....." , and "I see some buttons that say games, TV, shopping....". So many distractions!!
It was quite awhile before I got her to ignore each of the pop-ups, flashing ads, etc., and to find the two little boxes that said "user name and password" next to them. :) By the time I verbally helped her to carefully type her email address and password clicked "log in", 45 minutes had passed. After it was over, she was worn out, I was happily relieved, and it caused me to reflect on the irony of it.
For someone like myself with a brain injury, distractions are constant. I used to be a very focused and attentive person, but now I am easily sidetracked. I am learning over the years tricks to help with this, but am quickly realizing that it's a constant battle. I am concluding that it will always be a struggle and to try to make the best of it. Something or some task that I used to easily complete now is much more challenging.
Yet really, we all have some "distractions" in life though. What are your distractions? I define a distraction as anything that gets our focus off of our goals in life. For me, I have many things that get my ultimate focus off of God. Brain injury or not, whatever distracts us from fulfilling God's purpose in each of our lives is truly a distraction. One that I will always fight against.
