by Sherri A. Stanczak

Created on: July 02, 2007

I turned seven in May, 1971. We had just got out of school for the summer and the only thing on my mind was playing with my friends and not worrying about school or homework. We lived in a neighborhood full of kids, so we never lacked for any friends. It seems like those summer days lasted forever. They were wonderful. We couldn't wait until dad got home. He was the neighborhood's biggest kid. He always joined us outside to play ball in the evenings. He was always so much fun.

That summer I started getting real bad headaches. In fact, for a few days in a row, I could only lie down on the couch with a cold rag on my head. I wasn't able to go outside or do anything. It hurt to hold my head up and the sun was very painful to my eyes. When my dad came home one night and seen that I was still laying on the couch, he sat down by me to question me a little. He wanted to know where I was hurting and what it felt like. The pain seemed to be above my right eye. My dad held his hand over my left eye and asked me how many fingers he had up. When I told him that I couldn't see anything, he was shocked. He flashed his hand in front of me and noticed that I didn't even blink.

My parents immediately got out the phone book and started making some phone calls. They got in touch with a Dr. Jones. He wanted to see me that night at his house. I remember going through these large gates to get into his house. He examined me there and said that I needed to be admitted into the hospital the next morning at Children's Hospital. I was terrified.

For three weeks, they ran tests, poked me, stuck me, x-rayed me and even did two spinal taps. I'll never forget those. The doctors were puzzled. By this time, my left eye was going bad too. My right eye was completely black and my left eye was 20/1800. They said that the optic nerve was so swollen that it was starting to push on the brain. They figured that I would probably get brain damage and that I may not even live. They were also convinced that I would never see again.

During that time in the hospital, my parents would take me down to this playroom from time to time. There wasn't much that I could do there, but there was a piano in there. Since I had a small chord organ at home and had learned to play that rather well, my dad wanted to see what I could do on the piano. He sat me down on the bench and was amazed that I could play a couple of songs even though I wasn't able to see the keys. He told me when I got better, he was going to buy

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