Tale of an Underdog...

Hello fellow readers and my people. BOL It's Trevor here with our March tale. To explain our title in depth, you have to understand first, that this is Brain Injury Awareness Month. We are going to delve through Brenda's journey not only of being a brain tumor survivor, but the remnants that were left behind. 

Brenda has experienced 2 concussions or traumatic brain injuries involving incidents in her kitchen. We have shared about these before and will not be going into detail. We only share this as background for this tale. Brenda developed an acquired brain injury as a result of having had a craniotomy performed on September 8, 2008. She is almost at the twelve and a half year mark, which will be next Monday, March 8th. Her nonmalignant meningioma was located in the right frontal lobe. It was the size of a golf ball. Her mother named it "Mini" See where Brenda gets her sense of humor from? Dry, but don't you love it? BOL

Brenda has what is called frontal lobe syndrome and it's real folks. In her case, it can cause her to react more quickly to anger or tears. The anger is when she sees someone she knows or cares about being treated unfairly. It's really all part of the empathy that has become stronger, since her brain tumor journey began. The tears can come when listening to a song, watching a show on TV or hearing a touching story. It's the soft side of her personality and I for one, am so happy that she even can experience these feelings. Sadly, some that have gone through a similar experience don't, or have what is called "flat affect" or feel nothing at all. I think you would rather feel, even if it gets to be intense at times. 

What we are about to share here, happened in the real world. It was something that did not have to happen, but that is life and hopefully you learn from these experiences, although painful at times. You have to understand with an acquired brain injury such as Brenda's, you would probably react and feel the same way too. That is why we felt that giving you a background would help give you a sense of what is being conveyed here. This is a serious issue and feeling like an underdog, doesn't help many situations.

Now we are getting into the meat of this tale. Meat, I love meat! BOL Sorry, I got off the track for a moment. Speaking of that, Brenda needs to be allowed to assess any situation first, before she tackles it. This became apparent immediately after her brain surgery. It was the same afternoon and the therapists came in and wanted her to do simple things like moving her feet toward them or moving them toward her. She had to actually think about how to do that. It might seem like a simple thing to you, but imagine how frustrating it was for such a simple thing to become a source of anxiety for Brenda. She even shared this with one of her neurologists once, not with much success, but that's another story. She hasn't been able to find a neurologist that she likes and who even understands her. 

I will get to our story in a moment, but you have to understand what makes Brenda tick. She has a lot to offer and feeling like an underdog can make that harder to accomplish. Brenda is the youngest in her family and growing up with 4 other sisters who had their own thing, was hard for her. Nothing ever came easily for Brenda. School was difficult, as she had a reading comprehension problem. She didn't retain what she just read and was hard to even read, because she didn't enjoy it. She loves it now and wishes she could make more time to do so. She had a teacher who saw this problem and worked with Brenda, in getting her the help she needed. She is forever grateful to this person, who was one of her favorite elementary teachers. 

On to our story, I wished Brenda had not had to go through this. Brenda is a helper by nature. It actually happened early on in her life. She did things without even realizing it. A boy she felt sorry for in elementary school because he was shy, came up to her several years ago and thanked her for being nice to him. Brenda didn't even remember doing that. Like I said, being a helper is second nature for her.

Brenda was asked to help out another department looking up data, as she had been scanning correspondence for them in the past. She noticed something was off while looking at stats and mentioned it to a supervisor. They asked if she could print up something as proof and Brenda said she would. The problem was that she wasn't sure how she would be able to print just what looked off, without having to print the whole document. We are going into great detail, so you get this whole saga in your head. BOL Brenda did not get a chance to even assess the situation before someone approached her and started scolding her, for wasting so much paper. It's ridiculous folks, and it's gets even worse from here. First of all Brenda asked this person if they could try talking a little nicer. You can still be respectful, when directing someone. So they wanted Brenda to go and find that place where you could do a screen shot. Brenda's computer was not set up for that particular function. Depending on what you do with on the electronic medical system, you might not have a specific function installed, which Brenda knew they didn't. 

Anyway, this person had the audacity to tell Brenda that they were starting to lose their patience with her. I can't imagine how Brenda was feeling, but she did raise her voice, I think simply out of frustration. What would you have done? Nothing was solved at that point, but Brenda was steamed enough to go and report the incident. She told her team lead if nothing was done and they did not talk to their boss, Brenda would go to human resources. This is not the first time this person has spoken to Brenda with such disrespect. Brenda went on to say that her day was now ruined. All she was trying to do was help out another department. This other person had no right to even get involved. They were not the copying police after all, Brenda's words, not mine. BOL

Brenda was able to find a solution, so she only had to print that one particular page. Again, if she would have only been able to have a chance to assess the situation before this person jumped all over her, this could all have been avoided. Needless to say, they are not on speaking terms at this point. Would you be? I guess they were told, that you never speak to anyone like that. It didn't make Brenda feel any better, because they will probably end up doing it again. Brenda has to work with this person, but does not have to engage in such ridiculous activity. 

Brenda came home that afternoon upset and even was crying. She actually cried for several days after. When she thinks about how this all could have been avoided, it still makes her angry. Let's be clear here, Brenda has a right to feel this way. She will work through it, as she has been for several weeks now. 

Brenda had a chance to do something a bit different this week. She was asked to help out in another department, which she had worked previously. She had not worked there for years and once again, those feelings of being an underdog resurfaced. She wanted a chance to go and get a refresher course, which she was allowed to do. This is how it should work folks. A lot of things have changed but she was shown exactly what to do. Brenda also had others she could reach out to if problems arose. It ended up going very well. Brenda wanted to do a good job and help out as much as she could. There was a little hiccup the first day, but it got resolved quickly and no one told her, they were starting to lose their patience with her. You simply do not EVER talk to anyone like that in a work situation. 

Everyone was so kind and welcoming, even thanking Brenda for helping out. It was a nice change of pace for her. She was even able to perform some of her other duties, as IT was able to fix it, so she could scan into the electronic medical system. Brenda was a little nervous about doing this once again, but those feelings quickly passed, when it became apparent that she could handle the duties at hand. 

Brenda is a fighter by nature, as we will be sharing in next month's tale. We have a great milestone to share and you will have to wait and see what that is. 

This is T Man Barking Off...