Job

Right now I am stressing out about finding a good job. No more of these dead end jobs that have no future. I need something that makes a good a mount of money and something I can see myself doing. With that being said I noticed how limited I am in what I am able to do. Having a brain injury makes things difficult and I always feel as though I can not do things as good as people without brain injuries even though I may actually be able to do it better.

It also does not help in how bad the economy is and it is very difficult getting hired for anyone. But, daily I sit back and bounce ideas around my head on jobs I would be able to do and do well.

A friend of mine who is a Federal Correctional Officer gave me the idea a couple years ago the I should apply to be a correctional officer. I truly think this is something that I can do and do well. I am not just looking for a job but I am looking for a career.

In today’s economy to finding a job that you can work and get a pension is tough. So I applied for it and have been contacted by several prison nationally. You never know until you apply.

The reason I am writing this post is to reach out to all of you survivors who are as lost as I am. I got out of college with a degree in journalism and quickly found out that this was not what I wanted to do the rest of my life.

I was lost and couldn’t figure out a good career choice and felt it necessary to find one as soon as I could so I could get out of my parents basement lol.

My advice to you is find what your good at/ enjoy doing and you will find your career path. I like working with people and people from that type of lifestyle interest me. So I find that this is a good selection of a career for me. Besides that after I put in my time I can transfer and go down south, away from the cold finally!

Buy my book!!

Buy my book Miracle Kid, The Seventeen-Year-Old Newborn here!

http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Kid-The-Seventeen-Year-Old-Newborn/dp/1469786370/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331295046&sr=8-1

Claims For Head And Brain Injuries – The Best Source Of Advice

Some one contacted me and told me that they would like to do a guest post on how to obtain claims when it comes to medical topics. Here’s what their post:

Accidents involving injuries to the head or brain can have a wide variety of consequences, and every person’s situation is different. For those considering pursuing a claim for personal injury, one of the key decisions will be who to go to for advice.
Although a free advisory service such as the Citizen’s Advice Bureau are frequently able to offer guidance, and your local solicitor may be able to advise you on general aspects of personal injury claims, where a head or brain injury is involved, there are a number of factors that make it worth considering seeing a specialist lawyer.

First, the accident itself. A lawyer specialising in this kind of personal injury will be able to assist with presenting the accident to court in the manner that best illustrates the case. They are likely to be experienced with using reconstructions or expert evidence in this area, and are familiar with the kind of medical evidence courts will require.
Second, the severity of the consequences. Head injuries can result in significant alterations to the victim’s daily life, and may impact significantly on their employment or business. Lawyers with detailed knowledge of this area frequently have experts whose qualifications and knowledge they are able to recommend, such as physiotherapists, neurologists or other medical practitioners.
Third, and most importantly, damages. A specialist lawyer should be best placed to calculate the correct level of damages that should be claimed. They will also be able to advise on the prospect of claiming ‘interim’ payments. These are damages that are paid to a claimant where their claim looks likely to succeed, and permit them to put certain arrangements in place before the litigation process has concluded.
Fourth, timing. Not all consequences of a head or brain injury are immediately apparent. In cases where the symptoms take time to fully develop, a specialist solicitor is able to advise on how and when to commence a claim.
Finally, living arrangements. A specialist will be able to assist a claimant to arrange their affairs so that the consequences of the injury are anticipated and provided for. They will be able to help with matters like power of attorney, dealing with third parties, such as employers or banks, and putting claimants in touch with specialists who are equipped to assist them manage their daily affairs.
In cases of all severity, it is worth giving consideration to getting specialist legal advice. Though in some cases their time may seem more expensive, in the long run it can often prove to be the right decision.

 

Written by Amy Henderson, a writer on head injuries and medical negligence .

“I have a dream”

Martin Luther King said I have a dream” not I have a plan. Keep this in mind as I write this post. 

Now, there hasn’t been a day since my accident that I haven’t woke up and thought to myself  ”okay, I have a new direction of where my life is to go. I want to take this new path because I strongly support it.”

I am always trying to plan what I am going to do with my life and why. I don’t know how many brain injury victims do the same thing as I but I was at a seminar last month and this is what I learned:

The gym where I am a personal trainer is undergoing a transformation. We are trying out this new program that is supposed to feed the trainers clientele.

At a seminar for it, the man who invented it, Jeff Ruso, talked about his journey and how he got to where he is today. During the seminar he talked about how he had a dream but did not have a plan on how to make his dream happen.

He began to talk about how he started this program that is all online now with paper trails and spending nights in cheap hotels across Canada and the U.S.

He had no idea how to do it but he had a vision for what he wanted out of his product. Long Story short:

I and many other brain injury victims have dreams. Whether its to one day be able to walk again or play a sport, we all have some kind of dream.

Take me for example I wanted to play baseball after my injury, Now, I realize God didn’t want me to play baseball. No matter how good I was at it, that’s not what he wanted for me. Now, I get it. He wants me to help others with this injury.

 Okay, so now I have this dream of helping people with brain injuries. How do I do it? Now I need a plan to do it. OR DO I???

The dream is intact, As long as I can keep that dream intact I can help people with our injury. Thats the beauty of it. One day at a time, slowly but surely I help one here, help one there.

I’m even writing books on things that helped me and about my journey with a brain injury.

It’s kinda like that saying you hear on that ancestory.com commercials”you don’t need to know what your looking for, you just have to start looking.”

You don’t need to know how you are going to accomplish the feat, you just have to accomplish it. 

I Wish People Would Have Patience With Me Sometimes…

There is a lot of people out there that have no patience for other people. Because of everything I have been through, I know and am able to patience for/ with people.

What I mean by this is that when someone does something bad or hurtful to you you must always think outside the box. For example when someone cuts me off in traffic, then flips me the bird as they drive by I do not get angry, I simply laugh.

I do not get angry because you must think outside the box. Maybe he’s not mad at you maybe he’s dealing with something in his life that makes him angry, so the littlest thing that ticks him off makes him express that anger. Maybe he just found out his wife has cancer or maybe his son was killed in Iraq. These are all possibilities we must ponder before retaliating in some way.

I started the title of this post I wish because something happen to me at work a couple weeks ago. I work in a gym as a personal trainer. I also must clean the fitness floor. My supervisor called me into the office and scolded me for not dust moping the group fitness floor before her class.

The truth is that I would have done it if I knew I had to (I was covering someone’s shift). She got annoyed with me and thought that I should have done it the night before, but the night before some kid broke his ankle so I was busy doing that.

The point of this post is that people think that I don’t have a disability because I look like a normal person. It takes me longer to process things and remember things. So it really rubbed me the wrong way when she got mad me for not remembering to do it before her class the next day.

She needs to relax, sit back and ask herself “WHY didn’t Zach dust mop the floor” maybe she would have remembered that I have a brain injury before making a big stink over the little incident.

By Request: Post Concussion Syndrome…Does it go away??

Now I am not a doctor, nor should my information be thought of in the sense that I am. I can only do my best to respond to the question that has been asked. On that note I can give you some information based on what I have found on the internet.

Some information that I found about Post Concussion Syndrome on a site titled Medscape is:

Some symptoms one may have are decreased tolerance to noise and light, irritability, memory loss or trouble making memories, difficulty focusing, headaches, trouble sleeping, dizziness, and people become tired easily.

Persistent percussive syndrome (PPCS) is believed to be symptoms that last around 6 months.

Yet some believe that symptoms lasting 3 months can be PPCS as well.

Another site says symptoms go away in as little as a few days, few weeks, and half of all suffers are usually symptom free in a month.

Making Moves

I’ve always wanted to be able to speak another language. I have just recently bought Berlitz Spanish premier language learning system but have came to the conclusion that the only way to truly learn another language is to be fully emerged in the language. This means I must move down to a Spanish speaking country to learn the language as well as I wish too.

With this being said it would be great to get away from the image I have here as being the kid who has the brain injury (even though most people don’t know I have one but people talk).

But as excited as I am to potentially start a new life, I worry. With my brain injury will I be able to learn a new language? Please let me know if you feel the same way as I, with anything that you may want to conquer but are at the same time, scared to try because you might fail.

Having said this I remind my self why most people don’t even know that I have a brain injury. It was that attitude of fearlessness that I posses that made me run on the treadmill when people starred at me and I would fall because I was learning how to run again.

Having a brain injury you cannot be scared because you will never achieve true happiness. You may think that you are happy but you always think about

…what if I had taken that leap, the leap into the unknown…..

FAQ’s about brain injuries

http://www.tbisca.org/tbi-resources/frequently-asked-questions.asp

Trouble at UPS

After working for UPS as a package handler for a week, I had to stop because of my injury. One of the jobs consisted of picking up packages that weighed up to 75 pounds and doing it as fast as I could. The other task was picking up a package, read the destination, and make sure it was in the correct order in the correct car; you had to do this as fast as possible. I thought I may be able to do this but one day I went into work and my left arm was dead. I had pretty much destroyed the right side of my brain in my car accident and the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body. When I say it was dead that’s exactly what I mean. I could not move it, hurt, it had no function. The function came back in time. I can only think that there is a direct connection between my accident and my arm reacting this way.That’s when I knew I had to get out and that this job wasn’t for me.

TBI Survivors Network

http://tbisurvivorsnetwork.ning.com/profile/ZacharyGauvin …..check it out!!!