School

Yesterday, I woke up to a big white envelope with my name on it. I felt the excitement rising from within. It’s a piece of paper that I have waited more than 8 years to receive, my Bachelors Degree.

Throughout my whole life, all I could ever think about was traveling and school. Getting straight A’s and getting into college was key for me. For as long as I can remember, all I wanted to do was to become a doctor so I could help children just like me.

Elementary was kind of a blur to me. I remember having a good time but I do not remember the times I fell ill. I guess its because I was so young and I probably didn’t know what was going on with my health either. All I could remember was the happy times and the teachers and friends I met along the way. After my first surgery, at the age of 7, I remember many teachers from my school, Heritage Prep School, coming over to give me cards that my classmates had made for me, but that is all I can recall from that early on in my life.

When middle school rolled around, I remember starting Ocoee Middle School but then I had another surgery. This time I could not go to the actual campus because this is when my rods were put in and I could not sit up for long periods of time. I use to go to school for 2 periods out of the 7 and then I would have to come home. Once I got home, I would have to go straight to bed and lay down. I would then pick up an old fashion office phone and call into my “at home” classes. This is how I finished all of my other core classes so I could pass the 7^th grade. Somehow I still managed to get all A’s. I was very excited when I was able to attend the full day of classes in the 8^th grade; I actually started to feel like a “normal” middle schooler.

High school was the best years for me. Most people usually don’t like high school, but for me, I loved it! The main reason was because I didn’t get sick at all for those 4 consecutive years. I was able to attend every single one of my classes, all of the dances and events, I learned to drive, and I also made really good friends. Those were some of the best days.

I was extremely excited to start college because it was a time that I can finally get into my career and do what I’ve always wanted to do, become a pediatric neurosurgeon. Well, things were going great, but then people who go through intense radiation usually end up forming another problem ten years down the road. For me, those 10 years had arrived. Feeling a bump on my neck and then finding out you have thyroid cancer, papillary carcinoma, really is disappointing. But as I usually do, I go in and have surgery, then come out and face life again. The surgeon took out my thyroid then closed me up. I only missed a few days of classes because I ran out of there two days after the surgery.

A few months later, I felt the same bump come back and I was extremely confused. We went to a different surgeon and he did a scan and realized that many nodes near my neck were cancerous as well. Apparently, the previous doctor freaked out and immediately closed me up. So having to go back for another surgery was tough, but this time all 40 of the cancerous nodes were taking out. To make sure that none of them grew back, I had to undergo radioactive iodine radiation. I was confined to a bedroom with an attached bathroom, with no face-to-face contact with anyone else. This drove me a bit crazy because I never liked being alone in the first place, yet locked away in a room for weeks. Here, I missed a good amount of college and at this point I did not know about filing for medical withdrawal. I went into school and asked for them to wave my classes for this past semester so I can redo them instead of failing all of them. I sat down with the school committee, I told them my reasons, and gave them proof, only for them to come back with “you either had to have been deployed for military reasons or have been pronounced dead.” Well, neither of those happened to me while I was out, so they made me repay them for the whole semester and still gave me straight F’s. That was hard for me because, it wasn’t my fault that I developed cancer again, and that the treatment I was undergoing made me exiled from others. I tried to fight it, but it didn’t even help in the long run.

The next semester, spring 2013, came around and I was doing great, until I started to trip all the time and my foot would not stay on my brake pedal. I knew something was happening again but I didn’t realize it would be my childhood brain tumor growing back. I stopped driving but continued going to classes. My parents began taking me to each of my classes and as I began to get weaker and weaker, I eventually ended up back in a wheelchair. We found a neurosurgeon in Miami who wanted to try and put a shunt in to help relieve the brain fluid from building up. I waited till I finished my semester and then we went down to Miami. I took another semester off so I could have this surgery completed. Once I recovered and learned to walk again, I went straight back to school. I was once again excited to continue my classes and move forward.

A few months passed and I became weak again. We believed the shunt stopped working and the fluid was building up again. I was very stubborn this time and continued going to school, until my arms stopped working. I knew at this point it was probably serious. I had a friend who helped take notes and kept me up to date with all of the material that I was going to miss, because I wasn’t going to withdraw from my fall 2013 semester. We quickly went back to Miami, which he performed another surgery, this time removing tumor that had grew back and fixing the shunt. I quickly returned to school, in my wheelchair, to take my finals so I could finish that semester.

I never fully regained complete strength in my right foot, so I had to have hand controls put into my car in order for me to drive, but I was still able to attend school with the help of a walking cane. The hardest thing for me this semester, fall 2014, was a professor who accused me of cheating because I turned my test in and walked out through the back doors instead of walking up the steps and exiting through another difficult path for me. I was so angry to know that I was accused of cheating because I was not stable enough to walk up a flight of stairs. I also did not do it without permission; I had asked one of the teacher’s assistants if it were all right to walk up the ramp instead of stairs. Never have I ever been accused of cheating because I was not able to walk up stairs and from that day forward, I made sure to struggle and walk up those stairs so that professor could realize that I never cheated, I was just trying to make it a little easier on my body.

Another semester started, fall 2016, and I was doing well until I ended up back in my wheelchair. This time it was a bit harder because all of my classes now had labs attached to them. We went in to meet with the students accessibility department to figure out if there would be a way to let me use my wheelchair within the labs, but at the end of the meeting we realized that the labs were not wheelchair accessible and I would not be able to complete those classes. At this point, my parents both were taking days off of work in order to take me to classes and that wasn’t fair to them anymore. I had to figure out how to complete a degree online. Biomedical Sciences was not available to take online and there was only one science related degree completely online, psychology. I had no choice, so I changed my degree and started working to completing it. Not only did I already complete 3 years of bio med, but I had also finished a minor in business, only to realize that the school would not award me the minor because I had to change my major. I was devastated after knowing how much work I put in and realizing it all went to waste. I’ve fought with the university board so many times and it never gave me the recognition or the proper respect for an individual who actual deserved it.

At this point, all I knew was that I had only a few more semesters left in order to obtain my bachelors degree and getting sick wasn’t going to stop me this time. My brain tumor came back, once again, and we started this new experimental chemotherapy. I took my computer to all of my chemo sessions and continued to finish my classes. After a couple months, the chemo started to have more negative side effects than positive effects, so we went out for second opinions throughout the United States. No one was able to help us, so we ended up coming back to Orlando to find a neurosurgeon at Arnold Palmer Hospital. I told them that I was not going to stop my classes this time, if they were going to operate, I would have to get back up within two days. All of the doctors thought I was crazy but I knew nothing would come in the way of my classes again, especially being this close to completion. I asked the neurosurgeon if he could move my surgery to the end of the spring 2018 semester so I could finish my finals. Most people would put brain surgery before classes but I think I worked way to hard for this degree and I could not let anything stop me. I finished my semester and that same day I had my surgery. I came out of it relieved that I only had one semester left.

The last semester, fall 2018, came around and I made it on the dean’s list. I finally did it. Yes it may have taken me more than 8 years to complete my bachelors degree, but I don’t think anyone is as stubborn as I am to keep on fighting for this degree. I’m proud of myself, even with all of the challenges I faced along the way, I didn’t give up. My pediatrician always told me, “if there is a will, there is a way,” and if you really want something and you’re willing to put in the hard work, no one or anything can stop you from succeeding.