ADHD is, I argue, an impairment in sense of time and a matter of difference in rhythm; it can be understood as a certain being in the world, or more specifically, as a disruption in the experience of time and a state of desynchronization and arrhythmia. Through excerpts of interviews with adults diagnosed with ADHD and observations, I illustrate how impairment in time is manifested in an embodied experience of being out of sync. I suggest that the experience of ADHD is characterized as 1) an inner restlessness and bodily arrhythmia; 2) an intersubjective desynchronization between the individual and its surroundings; and 3) a feeling of lagging behind socially due to difficulties in social skills. In closing, I argue that an increasingly accelerating society is augmenting the experience of being out of sync rather than eliminating it.

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Sundhed.dk is Denmark's national eHealth platform allowing citizens to access their personal health data. Based on 16 qualitative interviews with patients, our aim in this article is to examine how patients engage with their health data. First, we illustrate how patients struggle in different ways to make sense of numerical measurements and written notes. Second, we examine the platform as a communicative space and suggest that a new “medical-domestic” space arises in which medical data is interpreted and negotiated at home. Third, we investigate how health data affects patients’ experiences of being involved as equal partners and how access to data potentially enhances patient empowerment, but also how expectations are sometimes unfulfilled. In conclusion, we argue for a broader public dialogue in order to make sure that the data provided actually creates an optimal starting point and does not foster insecurity or self-doubt on the patient's side.

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This paper explores the widespread use of numbers in health education programs and provides a reflection on the interplay of the medical and moral significance of numbers. Furthermore, the paper points out how patient schools are captured in a borderland space where moral and medical rationalities merge, clash, and collide. Empirical examples from an ethnographic study of six patient schools illustrate different practices where educators and participants reflect and act upon numbers in different ways. We argue that in the settings of patient schools numbers have become a symbolic form or language that point towards a broad range of natural and cultural phenomena. Drawing on Mattingly’s notion of ‘moral laboratories’ (Mattingly, 2012) we argue that what is to be cultivated in these pedagogical settings are not plants or microorganisms or scientific knowledge, but knowledge of body and self. This knowledge should ideally – if given proper care and guidance – grow strong enough within the confines of the moral laboratory to be able to survive and grow stronger in the participants’ everyday lives. Finally we show that even if the use of numbers is being stretched to include not only the medical, but also the psycho-social domain some numbers seem more ‘real’ than others within this field of practice: The ‘phenomenological’ or self-assessed numbers, as well as the appliance of numbers to ‘human kinds’ (Hacking, 1992), is contested and controversial.