A Medical Setback

Something that I think about all the time is that the clock is ticking on poker.  I need to make something happen but, as detailed in previous posts, that never seems to happen.  There are often good reasons for that, for example, when I was acting as a caregiver for a relative.

Yesterday was my 61st birthday.  I don't have unlimited time to get my career as a poker player off the ground.  Now it's on hold, again for good reason.  We are moving to a place where it will be much more quiet, I will have finally have my own office and we will save about $400 a month over what it costs to live where we are now.

I told my wife a few days ago that in November when we're all set in our new place, I can't let anything else get in the way of poker.  I have to make it happen NOW,  Then I went to pick up a perscription--and I found out that the insurance no longer covers Adderall.

I definitely have some things going for me at the poker table, and my brain is in some ways my best asset.  My IQ is 154.  But in other ways, my brain isn't so good.  I have Attention Deficit Disorder and I have a problem moving information from short-term to long-term memory.

What that practically means is that if I play poker against you today, tomorrow I'm not going to remember most of the details about how you play and I certainly won't precisely remember any of the hands. ADD makes is very difficult for me to concentrate, be organized or stay focused--this is a big deal not only at the table, but when I'm home studying. Try using flash cards to memorize hand ranges when you have a poor memory and have trouble concentrating.

ADD hasn't been that much of a problem once I knew what I was dealing with and found the proper medication.  It doesn't help with the memory problems, but it helps me focus at the poker table.  It also helps me sit for a boring half hour looking at flash same cards over and over until I finally get a new hand range memorized.  I have to review the cards often or I forget what I learned, but I can do that.

Without Adderall it would be impossible to do a lot of that things I can do now.  Without Adderall I took my 154 IQ  to three different colleges and finished withonly one degree, from a community college. I had to repeat some classes to get that far.

This is really scary.  The first ADD drug that I took didn't work, and I found what I needed with Adderall on the second try.  Now the insurance company wants me to try other drugs which may or may not work for me.  My other options are to pay for Addrall out-of-pocket or go through a long appeal process to get covered for Addreall.  Neither is a good option.

This is really scary.  The clock is ticking, louder and louder.  Poker was mostly on hold for two years while I was a caregiver, and now this.  It's really discouraging.  I hope that this isn't as bad for poker as I think it will be.