Chris Charanza
Pre-takeoff checklist
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Chris
So I posted here a while back about this and wanted to briefly share my experience with the testing I had to do as a result of being prescribed adderall. First I wound up having to travel to the south side of Houston, TX for the exam but that wasn't really a big deal (about a 4 hour drive total from where i live). I went up the day before and got a hotel for the night and had my appointment yesterday (04-12-22).
So I arrived for the 9:30 appointment, went through some basic get to know you type stuff and had a Q&A with the psychologist with him basically asking me some life history questions etc.. After that I was taken to another room where I sat with his assistant and we proceeded with some testing. I won't go into great detail but will touch on some of it below:
i started out with a computer in front of me and the test was that letters would flash on the screen and i was supposed to press the spacebar for every letter that flashed except for the letter X which would randomly appear. This test changed in speed periodically and went on for 14 minutes. I'd say I might have pressed the space bar on X three times out of 14 minutes so I felt good about it and the person giving me the test assured me I did fine. After this there were a series of other tests including a trailmaking test with both letters and numbers a math test (arithmetic all the way up to trig and I haven't done trig in a long time). Then I had go red a sheet full of different words from basic somewhat complex. This was followed by a digit span test both forwards and backwards. I did really really well on this to my surprise and was able to get 9 digits forward and 8 digits backwards. The most challenging test of this entire period was the PASAT. It was basically broken down into 4 sections that followed one after another after a brief pause in between. With each one the numbers were read faster and faster. I did very well on the 1st 3 and it wasn't until about half way through the last one that I got behind. Overall I think I did well on this one as well. I also had to name of all the animal names i could think of, was given letters and told to list as many words as I could that weren't names of people , states and something else, this wasn't terribly hard but after a while i did seem to run out of vocabulary. On a side note before I started taking these tests the psychologist i was seeing did tell me not to stress to much about it and that no one ever gets them all and that my goal was only to land on the curve and not to be perfect which helped me no to stress over it
After the testing with the assistant I took a break for lunch and then upon returning for lunch I came back and met with the psychologist which is when I did the actual cogscreen on the computer. It was basically a touch screen with a stylus and you had to input everything by touch. I had a word math problem, a question about if a train left at a certain time and had 3 stops of 15 minutes each and was traveling at a given speed what time would it arrive, this was easy. The good thing is that most of the tests on the cogscreen did have a practice test so you could get acclimated and when you were ready you would start the actual test. The two that I ultimately did fine on but had to do the practice test a couple of times were the one where you had to keep a tick mark centered on a line and do number recall and one where you had a circle on the screen where the top and bottom were a different color and when the dot crossed over into the colored areas you had to bring it back to center while also at the same time determining if two sets of letters were the same or different. Once I ran through the practice test a couple of times to get the hang of it i did fine on both of these. The test with the man holding the flag was a little challenging when he went upside down but very doable. The only other one that really stands out to me a somewhat computerized version of the trailmaking test but the numbers were in boxes and would disappear as you tapped the screen and be replaced by another and you had to click them in order and in the center of the number which was followed by the same test but with letters added. There was one where you were given a box with a pattern and then on the next screen two boxes with two patterns appeared and one was the same as the previous page but again this wasn't hard to do. There was more involved that i know i'm leaving out but for the sake of time and droning on i won't list them here as they really don't stand out in my mind.
After the testing was completed I was given the MMPI which was 567 questions with True & False as the answer choices. I've taken one of these before and for me it was pretty straight forward. After I had completed the MMPI I was instructed to drive about a mile away to a quest diagnostics for a drug screen. Luckily for me the psychologist that was administering my testing had scheduled my drug screen for me and the fee I paid him included the drug test which was helpful as it was one less thing I had to do. Upon completing the drug testing I drove back over to the office and we finished up the interview and I was on my way back home.
I will close with some final thoughts on this whole process. For those of you wondering the total cost for the evaluation was $2100.00 from my pocket to the psychologist. The drug screen through quest was another $135 I believe so the total cost was $2235.00. I will say that i had this appointment booked for 2 months so I was very anxious going into it and was almost filled with dread from some of the horror stories I've read about it but when it was all said and done I felt really really good about it. The psychologist (well i keep saying that, he's a neuropsychologist) said that while he could give me a definitive yes or no because he had to score everything etc he was very reassuring that based on his experience (he said he'd been giving the FAA assessment for 10 years) that from the data he did have and from looking over the cogscreen results initially that he thought that I did very well and shouldn't have anything to really worry about. The crazy part is that I had put in the request to the FAA for my medical records (which there aren't much because i never was granted a medical certificate to begin with) about a month prior and the FAA had still not gotten back to him. At some point I wonder if the fax went through and if I should maybe call the RFS office and see if they can at least tell me if the request was received. He said he would've been surprised had they responded by yesterday so now it's a waiting game.
So I arrived for the 9:30 appointment, went through some basic get to know you type stuff and had a Q&A with the psychologist with him basically asking me some life history questions etc.. After that I was taken to another room where I sat with his assistant and we proceeded with some testing. I won't go into great detail but will touch on some of it below:
i started out with a computer in front of me and the test was that letters would flash on the screen and i was supposed to press the spacebar for every letter that flashed except for the letter X which would randomly appear. This test changed in speed periodically and went on for 14 minutes. I'd say I might have pressed the space bar on X three times out of 14 minutes so I felt good about it and the person giving me the test assured me I did fine. After this there were a series of other tests including a trailmaking test with both letters and numbers a math test (arithmetic all the way up to trig and I haven't done trig in a long time). Then I had go red a sheet full of different words from basic somewhat complex. This was followed by a digit span test both forwards and backwards. I did really really well on this to my surprise and was able to get 9 digits forward and 8 digits backwards. The most challenging test of this entire period was the PASAT. It was basically broken down into 4 sections that followed one after another after a brief pause in between. With each one the numbers were read faster and faster. I did very well on the 1st 3 and it wasn't until about half way through the last one that I got behind. Overall I think I did well on this one as well. I also had to name of all the animal names i could think of, was given letters and told to list as many words as I could that weren't names of people , states and something else, this wasn't terribly hard but after a while i did seem to run out of vocabulary. On a side note before I started taking these tests the psychologist i was seeing did tell me not to stress to much about it and that no one ever gets them all and that my goal was only to land on the curve and not to be perfect which helped me no to stress over it
After the testing with the assistant I took a break for lunch and then upon returning for lunch I came back and met with the psychologist which is when I did the actual cogscreen on the computer. It was basically a touch screen with a stylus and you had to input everything by touch. I had a word math problem, a question about if a train left at a certain time and had 3 stops of 15 minutes each and was traveling at a given speed what time would it arrive, this was easy. The good thing is that most of the tests on the cogscreen did have a practice test so you could get acclimated and when you were ready you would start the actual test. The two that I ultimately did fine on but had to do the practice test a couple of times were the one where you had to keep a tick mark centered on a line and do number recall and one where you had a circle on the screen where the top and bottom were a different color and when the dot crossed over into the colored areas you had to bring it back to center while also at the same time determining if two sets of letters were the same or different. Once I ran through the practice test a couple of times to get the hang of it i did fine on both of these. The test with the man holding the flag was a little challenging when he went upside down but very doable. The only other one that really stands out to me a somewhat computerized version of the trailmaking test but the numbers were in boxes and would disappear as you tapped the screen and be replaced by another and you had to click them in order and in the center of the number which was followed by the same test but with letters added. There was one where you were given a box with a pattern and then on the next screen two boxes with two patterns appeared and one was the same as the previous page but again this wasn't hard to do. There was more involved that i know i'm leaving out but for the sake of time and droning on i won't list them here as they really don't stand out in my mind.
After the testing was completed I was given the MMPI which was 567 questions with True & False as the answer choices. I've taken one of these before and for me it was pretty straight forward. After I had completed the MMPI I was instructed to drive about a mile away to a quest diagnostics for a drug screen. Luckily for me the psychologist that was administering my testing had scheduled my drug screen for me and the fee I paid him included the drug test which was helpful as it was one less thing I had to do. Upon completing the drug testing I drove back over to the office and we finished up the interview and I was on my way back home.
I will close with some final thoughts on this whole process. For those of you wondering the total cost for the evaluation was $2100.00 from my pocket to the psychologist. The drug screen through quest was another $135 I believe so the total cost was $2235.00. I will say that i had this appointment booked for 2 months so I was very anxious going into it and was almost filled with dread from some of the horror stories I've read about it but when it was all said and done I felt really really good about it. The psychologist (well i keep saying that, he's a neuropsychologist) said that while he could give me a definitive yes or no because he had to score everything etc he was very reassuring that based on his experience (he said he'd been giving the FAA assessment for 10 years) that from the data he did have and from looking over the cogscreen results initially that he thought that I did very well and shouldn't have anything to really worry about. The crazy part is that I had put in the request to the FAA for my medical records (which there aren't much because i never was granted a medical certificate to begin with) about a month prior and the FAA had still not gotten back to him. At some point I wonder if the fax went through and if I should maybe call the RFS office and see if they can at least tell me if the request was received. He said he would've been surprised had they responded by yesterday so now it's a waiting game.
