"From Where I Sit" Video Series

LaDonna's Story — Video Transcript

I was on standby to go to Iraq. So I did my will, sea-bag was packed, locked cocked, ready to go. I was one of those few marines, female marines, African American marines at that who was able to go places and do things that your average marine did not get to do or see and then I got a call that I didn't have to go.

So I was so relieved but I had already had all the vaccinations and I had a very, very bad reaction to the anthrax vaccination. They told me that I was suffering from Gulf War syndrome and I had an infant at that time. You know and he was very new to the world.

My disabilities are many and they are unseen. I live in pain everyday. Everyday. I walk around the house sometimes in just circles not knowing what I am supposed to do next. I stare off into space and have to snap back somehow my mind [whew]) memory, memory loss. The anthrax caused a whole bunch of things. You know there are so many things that go on that I have to live with personally that people don't even know that they have no idea about. When your life takes a transition from fast track to almost no track how do you get back how do you find your way back how do you pick up those pieces that were broken from your whole self of what it used to be. And the journey that you were on and so it has made my life a living hell.

A motivating factor for me coming to college was the fact that I felt compelled to leave a legacy for my child being a military born baby. I've got this GI Bill you know that was promised me. I paid into it. And so going to college was one way for me to be able to pass that on. I am committed enough and courageous enough to put myself in school.

I use Assistive Technology to help me auditorially remember. It helps me because I am a slow reader now. I don't read fast anymore. I don't comprehend it when I read it. I find myself... I have found myself reading paragraphs over and over and over again stuck on one page for 30 and 45 minutes.

Sitting in classroom is painful. I have a short attention span. I try to sit up front so I can stare at the teacher in the eye so I can make sure I am trying to listen but it is sometimes hard to grasp what they are saying because I can get it mixed up. I hear one thing but they are telling something else. That didn't used to happen to me.

There was one teacher that told me that I got the assignment all wrong... I wasn't listening when I am very attentive. But it's just that I got it mixed up because of my disability. So it is those... when a teacher makes you fell like you are stupid... you know you aren't stupid and you know that something isn't connecting, but you don't want be made to feel like... like you don't belong in that classroom.

Thank God for Assistive Technology! That is helping me tremendously and keeps me on focus. We are behind already when we come into the classroom because of our disabilities so we need to be able to get our books ahead of time because that will help us to be able to not go and stress because we already have the stress of our disabilities that we have to live with on a daily basis.

Rather than handouts... visuals, being more creative in the classroom using visual aids with examples that can drive home a point better than just words on a piece of paper would make for me think stick a little bit more and I am sure people like me.

With this education I am going to be able to write the play I have always wanted to write, I am going to be able to write the songs I have always wanted to be able to sing. And I just want my child to know that no matter what I want him to have an education so that he can become a responsible person in society, to help to not be a burden on society, a liability on society, but to become an asset to society. And I feel that my role as a parent as a student is an example for him to just became that much better. I am going recite a portion of a poem that I wrote called Obstacles Overcome:

Although obstacles continue to show up at my life's door, uninvited,
With its cunning deception conniving it's way into my space,
As it seeks to lure me into a fight, blinded by its own eye so full of hate.
Obstacles just do not see, that it cannot and will not defeat me.