Anita Dehghani

I was born in Wisconsin, raised in Michigan and now live in California. After I graduated from Troy High School (Detroit, MI suburb) in 1965, I went to Western Michigan University and got a BA in English and Linguistics and later a MA in Teaching of Reading. So in which field did I make a living? - Banking !!! I became involved with employee benefit retirement plans on the trust side of the banking industry while in graduate school. I was a Trust Officer for Wells Fargo Bank until 1997. Loved the work. I would still be with them had I not had a severe fall in November of 1996. Fatigue, noise and stress factors play key roles in my life now. That kills my prior field and many others. I am a stay at home mother who does some volunteer work.

A bit more about the results of that fall in 1996. Although I was only hospitalized for a day, I did not return to work until January of 1997. (See http://tbichat.org/stories/anita2.htm at TBI Chat site). It was then that I found out the damage was permanent. So in May of 1997, I was placed on long-term disability for an acquired brain injury....sometimes called a traumatic brain injury. It has been a struggle to live with the changes. It has had a tremendous impact on my ability to absorb new information, executive function skills, short-term memory, and organizational skills. Most of what I experience, non ABI folks also experience: like not remembering what you are doing, losing your keys, forgetting appointments, trying unsuccessfully to recall information you learned or read 3 month ago et cetera. Just multiply it by 5 to 10 times. Took forever to get the medical and support programs I needed. I've grown to hate insurance HMO's. I attended a wonderful cognitive retraining program at Coastline Community College. It is a two-year Acquired Brain Injury [ABI] program designed to meet the psycho, social and cognitive needs of the participants. Basically it trained us to re-learn how to learn. We went back to the basics: same/different, logic and argument skills like Venn diagrams and premise support arguments. I have been lucky not to lose my verbal and writing skills --- although my penmanship has gone downhill and I sometimes cannot process grammatical or spelling errors when I make them--- glad computers are here. I do not think I have the time to recover my math skills to apply to the work world. Fatigue, noise and stress factors play key roles in whether I can process information and retain it.