In the first term of the Master's Program I did well, winning both the Prince of Wales Scholarship (a Canadian Legion Scholarship for disabled students pursuing post-graduate education) and a Graduate Student Award for placing among the top ten in marks. The two monetary "gifts" did a great deal toward easing my financial worries. Unfortunately, the after-effects of my injuries and incidental illnesses along the way still combine to make it tougher to reconcile what I've lost or to continue what I've started. A flare-up of accident injuries and the sudden onset of various allergies meant I had to take this past school year off. I was even too ill to write two final exams in April of 1995. Five operations later and the receipt of A Soroptimist Foundation of Canada's Grant for Women will make it easier to return to school this September

That I am not able to perform work, mental or physical, seven hours a day for even four days a week before lapsing into a semi-comatose state is still depressing, however, especially when compared to my pre-accident energy level, or to others my own age. A comparison with my ability to perform work a year post-accident (ten minutes a day) is more heartening. Two years post-accident it was twenty minutes a day. But I have not yet mentally adjusted to the fact that I am not able to keep up a "normal" pace all day, all week. The process of aging will no doubt soon come to be more of a factor, in addition to medical forecasts of increased disability. I hope, with the help of friends and relatives, to be able to turn this bleak future into more of a coherent whole, thus creating a worthwhile conclusion to a good beginning and a rocky mid-life.

Jane Warren is a native Nova Scotian who is working on her third university degree. She is a director and participant in a survivor support group with the Brain Injury Association of Nova Scotia and a member of the Metro Area Women with Disabilities. Jane is also a passionate bargain hunter and a white knuckle flyer who loves to travel