Time Management with TBI Effects Return to Work

Time Management with TBI: Chris Part Seven

Quite remarkably, Chris went back to a part time job she had at the time of the accident, even before she finished high school. She did work there for four years after her accident, but aspects of her disability, time management with TBI,  cost her that job and she has not been able to find other work since. She explains that she worked for a major shoe company:

I just answered catalog requests. You know the catalogs you can look at you would get in the mail and stuff? I would enter your name and your address and all that.

She worked four hours a day. Even though her left hand is severely disabled, she was able to do the computer input job with one hand. She ultimately got fired because of attendance issues caused by time management with TBI.

Because I would miss the bus, the city bus I had to take to get there. I would like always think, oh I have a couple of minutes yet I can do this or I can do that, but then it would take longer than I thought and I would never get there on time before the bus passed.

Even though Chris was early for our interview with her, she states that she has major issues with time management with TBI:

I’m always late for everything. I get distracted really bad, really bad. I can’t just stop and get ready. I have to play with the cat or pick something up or just little things like that they add up and make me late. Like to be ready to go somewhere, I always just keep putting stuff off and putting stuff off, thinking I’ll have time but I don’t.

For more about the role of time management with TBI in executive dysfunction, see http://tbivoices.com/blog/uncategorized/frontal-lobe-and-executive-functioning-challenges-after-coma/ As stated there, in order to achieve goals, a person must organize how time and effort are allocated to a plan. Chris lost her job because she had issues with time management with TBI.

For Part Eight – Chris’s persisting Deficits, click here.