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Acronym Definitions
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PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
- TBI --- Traumatic Brain Injury
- ADA -- Americans with Disabilities Act.
- DSS ---- Disabled Student Services at UC Santa Cruz.
I was their client starting Fall 1984 to Spring 1990.
- DSPandS - Disabled Students
Program and Services at Cabrillo College. I was their client
starting Fall 1991 to Spring 2007.
- DRC --- Disabled Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz.
I was their client starting Fall 2007 to Spring 2008.
- DSS was renamed DRC after my sham graduation from UC Santa Cruz in 1989. Their website says in the
1990's, but no more accurate information is available. I found the exact same facade of service under a new name. Changing the name had
affected the hostility I found with DSS. It was more apparent with DRC.
- DSPandS was renamed Accessibility Support
Center (ASC) when I checked in November 2014. Is this the same facade of service under a new name?
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drawn by me at Kresge college
UC Santa Cruz, Winter 1982
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I am a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) survivor with a degree in Biochemistry, I earned after my accident. The experts kept telling me, healing
from my
TBI was no longer possible. Happily, I ignored them (their dire/sadistic attempts to make me feel hopeless) and listened to other head injury survivors.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy did allow me recovery from my TBI 31 years after the climbing accident my family and friends thought had killed me,
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Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) - Recovery for Head Injury (TBI) Survivors.
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In 1983, a 165 foot rock climbing fall left me in coma for six weeks, with a
broken back, a TBI and other serious injuries. 31 years after
my accident I had finally given up on exercising to improve my physical condition. The right side
of my body didn't respond to motor input anymore. Exercise made me tired, but had no effect on my right side - it was really discouraging. Then in August 2014
I heard about HBOT on Brain Injury Radio. Intrigued, I contacted
Bay Area
Hyperbarics
though I had no expectations of ever having a
functioning right side of my body again.
I was (and am) utterly astounded by this completely unexpected positive increase in my physical well being.
After 60 HBOT sessions:
- I am using my diaphragm to form words again. The volume and depth of my voice is increasing. It is
becoming easier for me to make myself heard in noisy locations. My normal speaking voice is returning after being gone for 31 years.
- After session 3, I realized my right foot was not longer dragging on
the ground. It was ruining my shoes and
The picture above is a link to Bay Area Hyperbarics,
in the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
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did not respond to exercise, I did not know what else I could do.
- I was so used to chewing with the left side of my mouth, that I was unaware I was doing that.
After 31 years I chew with both sides of my mouth again.
- I can stand with weight on my right leg again. It would not support me before
HBOT
and I fell a few times a year for 31 years.
- After 31 years I have stopped favoring my right leg. My weight is equally spread between
my feet once more.
- After 31 years I no longer lean to the right.
- After 31 years fine motor control is returning to the right side of my body.
- I can shave faster with less pressure.
- Before session 16 I was able to stand free without having to constantly brace myself.
- After 31 years I can read print with both eyes open again.
- After 31 years I can hand write letters again.
- I can pet my cat with my right hand now, without her trying to bite me.
- After 31 years I can eat using my right hand again.
- For the first time ever I can write my own mathematical equations (calculus) and have the time to error check them
for Algebraic mistakes.
- I can tutor mathematics, chemistry and physics because now I have the ability to show in writing what I am talking about.
Before Hyperbarics I was physically unable to do that.
TBI survivors need to know that they have an alternative to being alone, feeling depressed and miserable about themselves.
I will always be grateful to Bay Area
Hyperbarics for helping me mitigate the more serious effects of my TBI.
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I was the best student
(click on the picture to the right to read my evaluation) in Organic
Chemistry at UC Santa Cruz in July 1982.
A month later, my brother and I, ran from Tuolumne Meadows to
Yosemite Valley (click on the picture of the trail sign to the left to read my
account of our jaunt) 29.9 miles in 11 hours.
Close the window that opens to return to this page.
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Scroll down to
TBI page navigation
or click HERE.
Remember to scroll
up to return here.
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Wireless Technology (WiFi) has serious concerns which
are being deliberately withheld from the consumer.
Ex: Lack of Media coverage of brain cancer causes.
Independent scientists are in rare agreement on
this issue. Read what they are saying about
wireless communications by clicking Here.
Scientific studies and opinions concerning
wireless communications (54), click
Links
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Better late then never.
31 years after my accident I found
completely unexpected recovery.
Click on HYPERBARICS
to see my amazing experience.
DSS, DSPandS, DRC and other acronyms used are defined
HERE
Remember to scroll
down to return here.
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By publishing some of my experiences in Higher Education, people can see the
importance of
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in enabling TBI Survivors to
receive rehabilitation designed specifically for their disability. Lack of feedback
made what happened to me inevitable.
Under the present system, DSS, DSPandS and DRC
chose not to implement the ADA and not accommodate my disability
with regards to my
rehabilitation. Rather, they chose to ridicule me and break the law (deny me
accommodation) because of my voice and prevent me
from advancing academically.
They must have assumed that because I spoke hoarsely and slowly, they could
screw me over. If
anyone found out, they would try to justify what they had done to their
client by claiming I was not a valid person, that I deserved it (them
not doing their job) and what was the problem?
Consequently, it took me until Fall 2007 to acquire and demonstrate the
knowledge I should have graduated with on March 21, 1989 (18 years earlier).
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“Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.” - Woody Allen
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Section 1 (of 3)
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An indifferent reality.
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[Page 1]
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Top [Page 1]
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I survived my rock-climbing accident with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI),
multiple broken bones and numerous impact injuries. Despite major system damage, I returned
to UC Santa Cruz in
Fall quarter 1984. My body was getting used to a new reality. Disabled Student
Services (DSS) was not interested in rehabilitating me.
They attacked my self-esteem, my private life and my social life
through denial of service. Their actions
isolated me from my
fellow students, embarassed me for needing help writing, humiliated me for needing,
and expecting,
quality assistance in the lab and wrecked most of
my friendships.
I did not realize it at the time, but this would become a phenomena that would
persist for almost two and a half decades (as long as I was in school).
After 24 years of psychological assaults on me, my ideas and dreams (whenever I was in school),
always having these Staff People
treat me like a person to be humored and smiled at, but never taken seriously,
I woke-to-reality, quit looking-the-other-way and finally stopped believing
their BS.
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In 1988 a friend told me I was the smartest person she had ever known. I had
been a client of DSS for more than four years by then and they had
succeeded in wrecking my self-image with the universal policies of
“Social Isolation”and “Learned
Helplessness”. I did not feel special by Carrie's
comment - I felt retarded. I needed help writing and was consistantly
attacked and called, "Ungrateful," by the Head of DSS whenever I asked.
She claimed that I was not appreciative of what DSS was doing for me.
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Did the Staff people of DSS, DSPandS and
DRC really think no one would ever tell on them?
I will probably get attacked, called paranoid, called
crazy and/or made fun of for blowing-the-whistle on what these
Staff people did to me. In spite of what the schools, they represented, claimed, these Staff people
made no effort to accommodate my disability.
They had no desire to to make it possible for me to succeed with my dreams of going to graduate
school and learning enough to engage in Cancer research.
They might have assumed
because I spoke hoarsly and slowly (a common TBI symptom), that I was, "Out-to-lunch."
They could treat me
like a second class citizen, because no one would ever find out what they had done - I don't know.
I do know that DSS had conditioned me (1984) to never ask questions or object to the way I was
treated. What happened to me is therefore the logical outcome of their policies (“Social
Isolation”and “Learned Helplessness”).
They might claim otherwise, but facts are facts. The fact is, they had not given me one
positive comment in 24 years at school (it would have been so unusual, I would remember it,
if they had).
I finally listened to what they had been trying
to beat into me since Fall 1984 when I dropped my first university class (Endocrinology)
because of DSS and their refusal to accommodate my disability.
In Spring 2008 I finally woke to my reality and dropped out of school at last.
When I returned to UCSC 18 years after I graduated, DRC continued with the
“Social Isolation”and “Learned Helplessness” that DSS
initiated in Fall 1984 (23 years before) when DSS refused to rehabilitate me. DRC
did not help me with writing my homework, though they knew I needed it.
I was not aware of my legal rights to take them to Court for not accommodating my disability
and they had no intention of informing me.
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There was an old lady called Wright,
Who could travel much faster than light.
She departed one day,
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.
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Section 2 (of 3)
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An indifferent reality.
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[Page 1]
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Top [Page 1]
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I was trying to figure out why
I put up with these Staff people for so long? I knew how self-destructive they were to
be around, (and had been), and, yet,
I continued allowing them to isolate and marginalize me (it is classic behavior of
someone who has been subjected to “Learned Helplessness”). How much was due
to the PTSD they gave me will always be a mystery. As if my PTSD and
“Learned Helplessness” were two separate entities (When I refer to, PTSD,
in my case, I mean feelings of "Hopelessness, Paranoia, Depression and Despair.").
DSS used “Learned Helplessness” and “Social Isolation,”
effectively. I had
been conditioned to hate myself for being disabled, to never object to my treatment and to never
ask questions.
- I knew something was not right whenever I talked with the Staff of DSS,
DSPandS and DRC , but did not know what
it was. The van drivers (people that worked for them) and I had normal conversations. I
know I was not imagining it.
- I was under the impression that other Staff knew what these Staff People were doing
to their clients, but did not care. How that transpired is a good question, because no
one was asking me.
- The psychology of victimization can help explain what happened to me and why I eventually
went along with them. For the first six months (starting Fall 1984) I protested my treatment
until I got tired of being attacked by the head of DSS. Nothing changed for the better
because I spoke up.
- Also, remember the fact; to attain my undergraduate degree and then learn all the
material for the classes in my degree, that I should have known
when I graduated, I did not have any other
option. I was forced to work with these Staff People.
It has taken me about 61 months (June 2013) of being away from UC Santa Cruz to put names to
what DSS, DSPandS and DRC were doing to me.
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Two lions are making their way across the Savannah in Africa. They
come upon a circus train that has stopped on the plain.
It seems the clown car has derailed, jumped the track, rolled
down the embankment, hit a boulder and burst open, killing a
couple of the clowns. The people have come out of the train and are standing
around trying to figure out what to do. They see the
lions approaching and hurriedly get back inside the train.
Nonplussed the lions settle down for a meal. Eventually, one lion raises its head
from the carnage and asks his companion,
“Is it just me, or does this taste funny?”
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Section 3 (of 3)
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An indifferent reality.
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[Page 1]
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Top [Page 1]
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Rather then feeling whipped, dwelling on the
reality of me being 52 (when I finally dropped out of school), not having job
skills in spite of 26 years of College and University
education, having my dreams of graduate school evaporate and
me being depressed about it,
something else happened. I wanted to publicize what I had been subjected to
in the interest of getting Reabilitation for TBI Survivors
established. I was not going
to school to waste time and resources. I had a plan, but so did the people
I had to work with. It took 24 years for me to admit defeat, but, at last,
they were successful.
I decided to use
some of my computer skills and publish
some of my experiences of them, on the Internet for everyone to see.
Accordingly, I composed everything you see. I purposely kept it simple
(HTML 2.0 and web-safe colors) so that most computers could display the text, as I
had composed it.
We need to be having to be
having this conversation about TBI Survivors and how we are being prevented by
well meaning (?), but untrained Staff people, in Higher Education, from moving on
with our lives. I am being generous when I say, "well meaning." These people
wanted a paycheck, they were not interested in doing the job they were being paid
to do. I was an annoyance they wanted to get rid of ASAP.
I decided to exercise my first amendment
right to free speech and publish what DSS,
DSPandS and DRC have done to me
and, by
logical
inference and Internet research done by me,
to other TBI Survivors at these schools and across America.
I hope my story will start a change in our educational system, so that students
with Head Injuries are rehabilitated with the same educational opportunities as
other students.
Three Pages to go.
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24 years of emotional trauma
at the college and university.
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I was the top student in Organic Chemistry
at UC Santa Cruz in the summer of 1982.
A year later, in mid-summer 1983, a 165 foot rock climbing fall did not end my life or paralyze me, despite
breaking my back. I woke six weeks later to an unforseen lifestyle change. While unconcious, I had been transfomed
into a criminal who survived a traumatic accident with a head injury.
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As I have never been imprisoned: “Social Isolation” and
“Learned Helplessness” were two new concepts to me. These two policies
would ruin 30 years of my life;
leaving me with no way to
afford a family, few friends and a terrible self image.
After 24 years of schooling, I am disabled, poor, unemployed and unemployable, because I was fooled into
believing untrained staff people were interested in helping educate me.
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Page 1
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Page 2
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Page 3
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Page 4
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In Fall 1984, my 24 year educational experience of paranoid loneliness and social isolation from my peers
and the people around me was begun at the UC campus.
The organizations that help disabled students with their education,
attempted to make me go away by denying me accommodation for my disability.
This was a deliberate event. I can not imagine why anyone would treat a law abiding American Citizen
like a criminal, though I have tried.
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My diploma in
Biochemistry.
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24 years of psychological torture, “Social Isolation” and
“Learned Helplessness” for the final year of my degree.
They had conditioned me in 1984/1985 to get used to being treated badly (sadistically) by them and I no longer protested anything
about my treatment after initially being attacked whenever I had.
The staff I was forced to work with at the UC campus and the Community College ignored parts of the ADA from its
passage in 1990, until Spring 2008 (one of them bragged to me in October 2009),
I finally realized these people had no intention of ever doing their job and I finally dropped out of school.
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My life is really sad, isolated and depressing,
because I refused to give up hope for my rehabilitation. I kept looking forwards,
trying to ignore the the subtle, but constant, sadism from the staff that were helping me and would not drop out of school for 24 years.
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What these Staff people did to me is not unique to the UC campus and the community
college I attended. The attitude they were using to justify their actions was evident wherever I looked on the Internet.
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Decriminalize head injury.
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- TBI survivors are not criminals or freaks - educate us.
- Toughen and Enforce The ADA.
- Make feedback mandatory.
- Make staff accountable for their actions.
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There is strong correlation between cell phone use and brain cancer. Follow these links (54) to scientific studies and opinions.
Links 1 - 27 or
Links 28 - 54
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As a head injury survivor, I needed
help with my education, but that
is not what I got.
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You are here
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Public employess chose to deprive the human race of a needed, dedicated and intelligent, cancer researcher (me), because they could.
These people intentionally ruined my chances to live a normal life and provide for a family because I am a head injury survivor.
Please help me expose them. Send links of this website with a brief explanation to every US government agency,
US government official, US government employee, anyone and/or media sources or organizations you can think of.
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