At the age of nine about 2 weeks after my birthday i was sent home from the third grade cause i wasn't feeling well, little did i know it would be my last time in grade number three. I started complaining to my mother about my vision. Soon after that she had noticed i was having trouble with my balance. So that night she took me to the emergency room were they could find nothing wrong with me and came to the conclusion i must have taken some drugs and sent us home.

The next day my condition had worsened so my mother got me in to see the family doctor and after one look at me he sent me to the children's hospital to have a cat-scan done. After that and a lot more testing they came to the conclusion that i had a brain tumor and it was cancerous.

Devastating news for my parents but for me i had never herd of such thing and had no clue what i was up against. The year being 1993 it was a fairly experimental thing i was labeled with a one in three chance of surviving. Since the type of tumor i had was growing so rapidly already about the size of a base ball they scheduled me for a operation immediately.

This was so new to me the only time i had been in the hospital before was when i was two and broke my elbow jumping off of the bunk-bed. The surgery was a success the had removed it all and i was still alive. But it was probably a week before i would talk to any one and my mom and the doctors thought i might have brain damage. It wasn't long after that they found i didn't. There were some things the tumor had damaged tho, for one they had to put a shunt in to drain floods from my brain to my stomach. It had damaged my hand to eye coordination and i had to be rehabilitated to walk again. There was also damage to the optic nerve behind my left eye causing to to cross and in results i seen double and stacked vision.

Soon after i was released from the hospital i began taking radiation therapy along my brain and spine as a result of this i became very sick and i couldn't keep any food down. I dropped to 28 pounds because of this but made it trough all 90 rounds of radiation. As soon as this was over they began the chemo therapy the first round almost killed me i had a allergic reaction so they switched me to another type. I made it through it all with the help of God and my preacher all of the doctors and my family.

It was a little later in life when they discovered the tumor had also damaged some of the hormone producing glands and all this was corrected with a hormone replacement.to this day at 23 i still take those medications and see doctors yearly but after a few more surgery's on things like my eyes i am able to live a normal life again

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