Impact on Work

And when I first got back, I started having some real bad problems with remembering customers’ orders, remembering SKU numbers that I’ve used for years. Counting money wrong. You know, I got to the point where they thought someone was trying to steal out of the cash register, so they secretly put a camera over the cash register. And they found out it was me. I was miscounting the money all the time.

My problem is my memory. And it really does - I took a ten-dollar an hour pay cut in January because I’m forgetting to call customers. I’m forgetting to call insurance companies. I’m forgetting which customer said what day he was going to be available. I’ll have a conversation with somebody in the truck, you know I got my little hands-free thing and I can’t write anything down obviously, so I’ll have a conversation with a customer say ok, you know what, tomorrow 2 o’clock, that sounds good, I’ll be available, ok great. So, I got you down Mr. Smith for tomorrow at 2 o’clock, awesome. Hang up, get to my destination five, eight, ten minutes later, whatever. Who the hell did I talk to? I don’t remember which customer that was. Or, that was Mr. Smith, when did he say he was going to be available? Was that tomorrow or the day after? I don’t remember. And so, I’ll have to call the customer back, which is really obnoxious, for the customer anyway. What time did I tell you? It makes me look like an idiot.

I forget too many things. I lose track of things. I have done little oddball job things for my sister. You know, she didn’t pay me or she’d give me a few, you know, “Here. Here’s a twenty-dollar bill for helping me out.” You know but I, I can’t. Oh, let’s see, she had me come in and do nothing but put papers in files. I swear, every five minutes I would have to go into her office, “Where does this go?” It, it just – I look at what kind of bill it is or what kind of form it is - ain’t nothing popping in my brain and she’d go, “Oh, that’s blah, blah, blah.” And I’d go and I’ll put it in there. The next day or week later, she’ll have me come in and do a little bit more filing. I’ll come across that same stupid paper, I have no idea where it goes and I have to go ask her again. You know it’s just things like that that people that don’t know me, they’re like, “This is getting really pain in the ass. She keeps asking the same question,” you know? And, and sometimes people make remarks. Like in group a couple of guys in there made a couple of remarks about, you know, me forgetting stuff. And I said, “Well, I’ll trade you places. You have my life and I’ll have yours and let’s see who does better.” And they go, “No.” And he said, “And it’s not fun.” You know, but I just, I just try to make light of it now.

I ended up frequently while I was still working, you know, having to call in sick at my job. And that was horrible, for me to do because I, I had the feeling that my staff, my co-workers couldn’t trust me. “You going to be there, you going to show up?” and sometimes I just could not be there.

What happened was, after my injury - I tried to convince - I was trying my best to convince myself that it was something that, even though I didn’t know what it was, that it was something I could overcome. I was at jobs where I couldn’t do all the stuff that I was doing before but I would try, and then what would happen was I would come up with excuses or I would have to miss time from work. And that became apparent too, going from job to job and missing time from work because I just really couldn’t work. Or people would notice, you know “what’s wrong with you?,” because I’m in so much pain and I’m having headaches, I’m walking real slow, I just can’t really move too quickly because at that time I wasn’t, I believed that if I just keep trying harder it’s gonna get better and I’m going to be alright. I never wanted to accept that it was a life changing condition. So, I went through jobs, I went through a lot of jobs like that, from job to job to job. And then I tried to find jobs that required less of me, like security jobs maybe where you were just sitting down somewhere, and that necessarily didn’t work too because with the post-concussive, it just never, I never know when I’m going to have a really bad day.

But I was able to have a stable job, but I did have problems with the job. They actually took away my driving privileges because of - I had to disclose to them I was feeling very dizzy and disoriented. It did affect my job a little bit. I was denied employment because of vertigo. They diagnosed me with vertigo - also I guess ultimately TBI, vertigo and kind of all correlated with each other. And I’ll just provide you a timeline but yeah - I mean - got out of the Marine Corps, had trouble finding a job, it wasn’t that I wasn’t trying it’s just that I really had trouble finding a job. I did all the things they taught in the three-day transitional assistance program and none of it helped. I did an odd job with UPS.

I came back and I took a job at ROTC at University of Portland. These guys have never been to combat and they were over in the theatre, but they never saw any combat. And they wanted me to be the recruiting officer there. And I said well I’d rather you know, be an instructor, but whatever you want. And they made it very difficult. I still had vision problems. I had aphasia. I still had a lot of difficulties and they, they treated me, they actually made fun of me. They called me a retard. I mean the just, they, because I’d stutter – you know? I’d have trouble searching for words, you know, whatever. I stumble. You know I’m just not as capable as I used to be.

Well I used to, you know, when I used to memorize these manuals, these field or drill manuals and stuff or these study guides, you know, for promotional exams in the, in the Army, and the fact that I could still recall those things frustrates the hell out of me because I, I’m like this bank of useless knowledge that pertains to the military. But when it comes to like specific statutes or individual case law regarding my job or when it comes to recalling the details of a report or an event if I’m testifying on the stand, I almost have to commit things to, or do my best to commit things to memory because I, I won’t be able to give you dates or times or tell you specifically, and that translates to me not being confident on the stand, which a defense attorney just tears me apart then at that point because, you know, I’ll give you an example. I lost a, so I gave a traffic citation because a gal blew through a stop sign. And it was a teenage gal. So when you go to juvenile court, they bring me in and I’m testifying, and she’s sitting there with her mother, and they ask me, “Well, did you see her stop, you know, 20 feet before?” and like, “No, I just didn’t see her stop at the stop sign.” And I ended up losing that case because I couldn’t tell them for sure or not whether she had stopped prior. As soon as I walked out, maybe 20 minutes later, as I’m mulling it over in my head, well then I had all these points I could have articulated regarding 20, 20 feet back she would have been able to see traffic oncoming and the whole point of, you know the, the statute says that you have to stop at the line within a certain distance from the stop sign, etcetera, etcetera, so not only did I lose the case because I wasn’t able to articulate my point, defend my actions, now this girl, this 17-year-old girl got emboldened and thinks that, even though she screwed up, she was able to go in and win this case and whatnot. That like was a life lesson that she’s being taught, you know. So, so that stuff, professionally, yeah, it’s frustrating, because I, I still can recall the stuff from way back but now it’s, it’s a harder task for me.