I can do this! I can’t remember anything that happens currently, not the new computer systems, not the new curriculum, not the changes they make to something I already learned before the TBI. In my research I have found that there is a Traumatic Brain Injury Unti and I am going g to see if they can help me.
You know how when you read that chapter in Harry Potter and he is the “boy who lived” and it sounded so strange? Well I am the teacher who can’t! So I try to cover up what I can’t do with the exception of my partner teacher. She knows all and she is wonderful to cover up for me. I decided I had to learn more about brain injuries and with help of my sister, my fiancé, one of my best friends…..I learn what I can’t do. Organizing, planning, remembering in the short term, numbers, problem solving. I am better when I am alone but in the high stimulation of a classroom sometimes I feel just worthless.
I was suppose to have a teaching partner and five minutes before my third graders walked in for the school year (yes changed my grade level again third grade level in three years) my partner teacher walked in the classroom. So working for an urban system and inner city kids is hard, working within the bureaucracy even worse. Luckily she understood I was learning how to live with a life long disability and it was all new! The newest …… I can’t read a clock and numbers mean nothing to me! What a surprise to be a teacher and not be able to know what numbers are. How do you survive in data based instruction when data mean nothing?
I was sick all summer that year and I slept and slept. I went to the doctors follow up and had CATS SCANS, all inconclusive. Then I went to a neurologist and he sent me for a MRI. came back…..I had a brain injury. It seems sleeping is the way your brain heels from trauma. I had been through a lot of trauma last school year. But the time the doctors told me the diagnosis, summer was over…..school had started and I had to survive with a brain injury. 
I did do something’s this year, that were not expected at all…..
Coffee has cancer and I have to face the fact we may never have another christmas together.
I bought a foreclosed house, that takes me back in time to face memories I didn’t know I could face, and it’s taught me I can make new memories while honoring the old memories. I can find find a sense of peace there.
I found out I see things no one else sees. I can see the possibilities of something when everyone around me doesn’t. I saw the possibilities in adopting a baby puppy named Coffee, who was a shelter bucket dog. I saw the house I wanted to see, and not the old run down wreck it was, I can see beyond the present to potential.
I have found relationships with grand nieces and nephews thru Facebook I never thought I would have .
I helped my friend say good bye to important people in their lives.
I have learned to live without Kathryn and Mary Beth though I miss them terribly.
I told you I would tell you more about me. I taught for 26 years in the urban environment in second grade and was transferred to first grade. I had several children with violent tendencies and the day after Thanksgiving a very violent child was transferred in my classroom. By Thursday he had given me my first mild concussion and fractured a tiny bone in my wrist. On Friday they gave me his Individual Education Plan that said “remove from classroom when necessary” “remove from classroom in restraint to office when necessary”. Well he had just broken my wrist, I couldn’t do that! His violent episodes escalated and by April I was injured again, torn rotary cuff and another concussion. By May the last violent episode, the doctors wouldn’t let me go back to the classroom for the last ten days of school because the concussion and neck injuries,this time, were so bad the doctors said I could die if hit just the right way again. I didn’t get to finish the school year.
Day 2 is a special day, it’s my birthday. So on day 2 of my journey I am thankful for all my friends and family. The ones I see in person and the ones I have found a way to share their lives on Facebook. While I am not an avid or professional Facebook participant, it has allowed me to share lives of grand nieces and grand nephews and great grand nieces and great grand nephews around the world and they have found a forever place in my heart. I will always be thankful for that.
It is a new year and I am making my life and finding the purpose of it. In the next week I will be telling my story and then as I find new things I will write about them here.
First the history. I am learning how to live without my classroom or my classroom kids. Teaching was my life for 30 years and I really never thought I would retire, I would just teach until I died. Then I got injured and could not teach in a classroom in a high needs, inner city environment anymore. Now what do I do? You can follow me on my journey. It’s been a year since I have been in a classroom. I never had children of my own but I taught other people’s children and we did so much more then just book learning. Each year the kids were my life. So here we go 2014. One day at a time.
What do you do when your job consumes your life and then it’s gone? By accident, purpose or design? I believe everything happens for a reason and I need to find out what this one is! 
