After a traumatic brain injury led to complete memory loss, a student finds recovery and a fresh start
In the summer of 2019, Alma Muñoz thought her life was on a good course. She liked her work as a medical assistant, but she wanted to move forward in her career so she took nursing classes. She loved to travel, and she filled her phone with pictures of her trips. In her spare hours, she found time to volunteer for the Make a Wish Foundation.
Muñoz, 27, was eager for what lay ahead. Then, on in early August of that year, something happened that no one could have foreseen: She suffered a traumatic brain injury in a traffic accident that put her in a coma for three months—and robbed her of memories of her whole life up to that point.
“Since then, I’ve learned the accident happened in Martinez and that I was in the passenger seat, but I have no recall of any of it,” Muñoz says. “When I regained consciousness, I couldn’t remember anything. Not my childhood. Nothing I had learned in school. I didn’t recognize my own parents or know their names.”
“When I got to On Track, I understood I was not the only one who had a TBI, there were many people there who were going through the same thing.”
Alma Muñoz, Patient, Mt. Diablo Education Education School’s On Track Program
Her traumatic brain injury (TBI) affected the part of her brain that controlled her ability to read, write, and do math. She lost all those skills. At first, she could not even speak or walk.
Initially, Muñoz received care at an inpatient facility in Bakersfield, 250 miles from her home in Antioch. Luckily, Muñoz has a powerful advocate in her corner: her mother and caregiver, Martha Garcia.
“My mom is there 100% to push me to move forward,” Muñoz says. “She motivates me. After the accident, she was looking everywhere for places to help me get better.”
A doctor told Garcia about an excellent place for patients like Muñoz—the On Track Program in nearby Concord. A part of Mt. Diablo Adult Education School (MDAE), On Track helps people with brain injuries relearn old skills, develop new coping skills, increase independence and build self-esteem.
“After the whole trauma and being in the hospital so long, socializing with people was difficult,” Muñoz remembers. “I was super-shy. I mumbled when I spoke and I couldn’t read or write. But when I got to On Track, I understood I was not the only one who had a TBI, there were many people there who were going through the same thing.”
She started at On Track in 2021,when the program was only offered online due to the COVID-19 crisis. Gradually, things re-opened and Muñoz discovered she liked going to classes and therapy in person, where she made friends and enjoyed working one-on-one with her teachers.
“The teachers were wonderful, very patient and helpful,” she says. “They helped me learn math again—luckily, I love math but I had forgotten everything I’d learned in school. To help my short-term memory, they had me read a story and then tell them what I had just read.”
The program’s individualized one-one-one care helped, she adds.
“For example, learning longer sentences were hard for me to comprehend at first,” Muñoz says. “When my teachers heard me struggling, they reminded me: ‘You have to slowly break the sentence down so you understand it.’ They were positive and supportive.”
Muñoz continued with On Track until June 2024. Now she has transitioned into the medical assistant program at Pittsburg Adult Education Center, where she is hoping to recapture some of the skills she lost after her injury. She also volunteers at the library on Thursday and Friday.
“I’m not a stay-at-home type of girl,” she says with a chuckle.
Nearly six years after her accident, Muñoz adds that she’s not sure where life will take her.
“My hopes and plans change; it might be a new path that I need to find,” she says. “I do know it will not be ‘normality’ or what I used to do before, and that I have to take it one day at a time.”
Muñoz says she now sees her injury as an opportunity.
“A lot of people might think that having a TBI is horrible—they’d ask themselves why did this happen to me?” she says. “I see it as a fresh start and a new life.”
For more information on Mt. Diablo Adult Education School’s Adult with Disabilities On Track Program visit https://mdae.mdusd.org/programs/awd
Written by Dorothy Korber
| Regions | Classes & Topics |
|---|---|
| Bay Area California | Life Skills |
