More About Me

My Story I was born in San Jose on Jan 14th, 1978. My life was going great until I got really sick. My mom took me to the doctor and he sent me home saying that I had a little cold. She took me again and they still sent me home and then gave me medicine. She kept on taking me to see the doctor and they kept sending me home. Then one day my neck got really stiff and my eyes rolled back in my head. My mom rushed me in again and the doctor then ordered a spinal tap. That doctor saved my life. When people don’t listen it can have fatal consequences on your life. If my doctors didn’t listen to my parents I probably wouldn’t be here today. It was then discovered I had meningitis. I was only 18 months old. Itis means swelling on the brain. It is an infection of the outer covering of the brain and spinal cord. I was told I had bacterial meningitis. How I got it is unknown. I was in a coma for 7 weeks. When I came out of the coma I had to learn everything again. I also was blind in the coma for a while because of the swelling on the brain. I was also paralyzed on my left side of my body. My nervous system was affected so I take medication because I have really bad spasticity all over my body. That is movements out of my control. When I became of school age I had learning disabilities. In school I was teased by everyone. I became ashamed to talk about meningitis. I think I still am, but this is who I am and I can’t take it away from me. I had friends but they were curious to know why I shook all the time but I was never comfortable to talk about it. I was never comfortable telling and they were never comfortable asking. So we never brought it up. The kids found other ways to express what they wanted to know. Kids who I thought were my friends made me do things that I didn’t want to do. I think kids made fun of me because they were embarrassed to ask. My teachers said I would never graduate. If only they could see me now and what I have accomplished. Junior High was the worst time in my life. And this was the time in my life that my spastisity was the worst in my life. I couldn’t read because I was shaking so much. I felt like it was out of control. I went to the doctor and he prescribed artane to make me stop shake or shake less. The teasing wouldn’t stop and I felt pretty close to ending my life. In high school I went on one of those little buses. I didn’t like it because I thought it didn’t make me look cool, whatever. So then one day I decided I would take the regular public bus to school. So I walked to the bus and got on. I didn’t realize all the buses went different ways so we went a totally different way then where my school was. I thought OMG we are going the wrong way. I got off after a long thought of maybe it would turn around. Of course, it didn’t. I was far away from my school and now I will have to pay for it by walking a couple miles. I thought about calling someone (this was before they had cell phones) there were pay phones. I thought I better pretend like nothing happened and I kept walking. I thought about just giving up and just sitting on the side of the road and maybe crying but I kept walking. Soon I got to my school but when I was just across the street a cop car comes up to me. He gets out and says, “Why aren’t you in school?” I was really mad. Where the heck was this cop 10 blocks ago. I was tired and didn’t really feel like sitting in a cop car driving across the street to the school. I didn’t really want to hear anything. He put me in his cop car and I started crying. “I was almost there,” I thought. I was so close, and now I’m going to jail. I had tons of thoughts going through my mind. Its never good when you think you are going to jail. But he didn’t take me to jail. He only put me in the back of his cop car. I ended up making only 2 of the 6 classes I had that day. It wasn’t even worth going to school that day. But I learned a good lesson. Research whatever you want to do and don’t assume things are going to go your way. And most importantly I never gave up. Another time I was at swim practice. I noticed people in wheelchairs practicing basketball next to the pool I was in. I was curious so I walked into the gym. The coach there saw me and said it was a wheelchair basketball team and that they practice every Saturday afternoon. I was thrilled to find a team that I could participate in. She invited me to play and told me I could borrow a chair to play in. Not only was there wheelchair basketball but there was a swim team too. I signed up to swim and play wheelchair basketball. The wheelchair team, which was called Wheels on Fire, played basketball and had several tournaments to go to. They also went to several swim meets including one in San Diego. I loved Wheels on Fire because it was the first time I didn’t feel like I had to hide my disability. Because there were others like me, I felt comfortable and could be myself. I practiced swimming so much that in my high school years my wheels on fire coach thought I was ready to compete and practice on my high school team. It really boosted my self esteem when I went on the team. I felt like I could do anything and I was so happy. Swimming on a team was hard. I just wanted to swim to be like everyone else. Soon I graduated high school and then went to a junior college. I took some test to see where I belonged. I didn’t do that well on that day for some reason. The lady there said I wouldn’t be able to go to college anymore sense I failed that test. I was crushed and started crying and ran out of the room. My mom told me not to give up and enrolled me in another college where I excelled and graduated with a Liberal Arts degree. Then I transferred to Cal State San Marcos. I had to take classes sometimes twice but I made it and graduated with a BA in Human Development. A lot of people said I would never graduate high school but I did. A lot of people said I would never graduate junior college but I did. I don’t know why people tell me things and say I can’t do something. It just makes me want to do things even harder. I want to prove them wrong. I even got a poem published in a book. I kept on trying to do publish something and maybe they got tired and said fine. The point is that I never gave up. I didn’t want to just sit on the side of the road. It might have been hard but I did it.