There are so many success stories in treating ADHD in the adult practice of Medicine, and in my office, one of them stands out. I have a patient who was coming in for the first time, 42 years old, a woman who is a single parent and an executive. She came in with a chief complaint of fatigue, anxiety and difficulty sleeping. When we really began to explore what was
going on, medically, she had some serious problems. There had been a heart attack. She had had two stents placed in her heart in the past and she was an exceptionally heavy smoker and still smoking.
During the interview, I did a screen to look for ADHD. The screen was time-efficient and it pointed me to think about this as a possible ideology for many of the problems she was having, including the heavy cigarette smoking. We begin to treat her and because of her cardio-vascular disease we treated her with a non-stimulant medication.
It became clear that she was suffering at work, almost to the point where she was going to lose her job. She was put on notice and had to report on a weekly basis with her boss, whether she having progress or not.
Over the course of treatment for her ADHD, her anxiety improved. She was able to sleep well. Her job performance dramatically improved and she got off of cigarettes. So all in all, the continuous stress that was driving her cardio-vascular disease and threatening another heart attack, the continuous stress abated. She was able to keep her job and her health improved dramatically.
