STEPHON NICHOLAS

Life has been an up­hill bat­tle for for­mer Williamsville Sec­ondary teacher Lisa Dar­manie, and it has taught her many dif­fi­cult lessons.

It has been ten years since she was forced to leave the class­room af­ter be­ing hit with a bar­rage of ill­ness­es that not on­ly made teach­ing im­pos­si­ble but walk­ing a chal­lenge.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, Dar­manie re­called go­ing from doc­tor to doc­tor try­ing to di­ag­nose what was hap­pen­ing with her.

She first got in­fect­ed with the Zi­ka virus, bring­ing fever, rash­es, joint pain and headaches, which in hind­sight were the least of her con­cerns.

Dar­manie was then di­ag­nosed with Ly­me dis­ease, with sim­i­lar symp­toms to Zi­ka but al­so fa­cial paral­y­sis.

The 46-year-old’s com­pli­ca­tions got worse as she was lat­er di­ag­nosed with Guil­lain-Bar­ré Syn­drome, an au­toim­mune dis­ease with no cure.

“I didn’t know what was hap­pen­ing to me at the time, but it turned out I was slow­ly be­ing paral­ysed. I couldn’t smile, I couldn’t frown for a cou­ple weeks....Since then, I have not been back in the class­room. This month would make it ten years that this ex­pe­ri­ence hap­pened. I am very nos­tal­gic right now think­ing about all of the strug­gles I’ve been through and I’m al­so very grate­ful where I am now,” she said.

The for­mer TTUTA rep­re­sen­ta­tive said she fol­lowed all the pro­to­col in sub­mit­ting her med­ical records, but her ap­pli­ca­tion was left un­at­tend­ed for sev­er­al years.

She had her first med­ical re­view three years af­ter she fell ill and in 2020 re­ceived a let­ter from the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty de­clar­ing her un­fit to re­turn to work.

In 2023, she was asked to do an­oth­er med­ical as there was an is­sue with the first re­view.

She said these de­lays have caused her se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial hard­ship and tur­moil as she has not re­ceived any sup­port from the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board or the min­istry.

On Tues­day, Dar­manie walked out the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in Port-of-Spain with a let­ter fi­nal­ly con­firm­ing her re­tire­ment on med­ical grounds.

It was the doc­u­ment she had been fight­ing to ac­quire for ten years, but with it fi­nal­ly in hand, Dar­manie felt no re­lief, on­ly empti­ness and a deep sense of hurt.

She said her let­ter con­firms her med­ical re­tire­ment as of 2024, but she still has a lot of ques­tions.

“What about all of those years be­tween 2016 and now? As far as I un­der­stand, af­ter six months of be­ing ill, you sup­posed to be sent for med­ical re­view. Every time I had to leave to go to the min­istry, it was a tremen­dous chal­lenge for me. I lit­er­al­ly was sent to psy­chi­a­try de­part­ment in San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al - it was just too much.”

She won­ders if she ac­tu­al­ly was ful­ly paral­ysed and un­able to con­tin­u­ous­ly vis­it the min­istry and ad­vo­cate for her­self, what would have hap­pened?

To com­pound her dis­tress, Dar­manie was slapped with a let­ter say­ing she owes the min­istry $163,000 be­cause it ac­ci­den­tal­ly over­paid her when she was on sick leave.

In ad­di­tion, she said the let­ter in­di­cates she start­ed the teach­ing ser­vice in 2007 when she re­al­ly start­ed in 2005.

Mu­sic keeps her go­ing

A Chris­t­ian, Dar­manie said her faith in God, her love of mu­sic, abil­i­ty to speak Span­ish and her strong will kept her from giv­ing up.

She re­called be­ing ward­ed at the hos­pi­tal and in­ter­act­ing with Cuban neu­rol­o­gists in their na­tive tongue.

She be­lieves they gave her even bet­ter care be­cause they were able to com­mu­ni­cate on a per­son­al lev­el.

“I had mu­sic in my ears right through, be­cause you hear­ing all those beep­ing ma­chines around you and peo­ple wail­ing, and even when my son got sick and went to hos­pi­tal, we were singing songs and chant­i­ng. That was our go-to re­source to sur­vive the sit­u­a­tion.”

She said mu­sic “wires the brain dif­fer­ent­ly” and al­lows peo­ple to man­age stress­ful sit­u­a­tions.

Guardian Me­dia asked Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath whether the sys­tem need­ed an over­haul to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy.

He said he would speak to the hu­man re­source de­part­ment and re­view Dar­manie’s case.

Ef­forts to con­tact for­mer min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly were un­suc­cess­ful up to pub­li­ca­tion.