Evolution of my life

I was born with my disability. I wasn't aware of it until I was 13 years of age but it affected me.

I was born in the autumn of 1970 in a beautiful southern California city. My mother was young until I was born. I brought out many traits in her; determination, guilt, stubbornness, kindness and her nurturing side. All that was just by being born. The rest comes later.

I was born with a benign spinal tumor. It was attached to the base of my spine. It was protruded outwardly but was fixed internally. The tumor was supposed to be harmless. The doctors said not to worry and although I was kept in the hospital for a week under observation, I was released with a clean bill of health. My week in the hospital with a myriad of diagnostic testing would foreshadow a lifetime repeated events. My mom and I left the hospital to start our life.

My mom knew that it was not a clean bill of health. I cried every second of my waking hours. The only thing that could soothe me was to ride a bumpy bus in my mom's lap. My mom describes the event with a great amount of emotion and tears in her eyes when she says, "I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn't fix it". She took me to many doctors until she found a neurosurgeon who said that the tumor was most probably causing me pain and he would remove it. So, at a tender age of four months old, I underwent my first spinal tumor removal operation. When the surgery was completed the doctor told my mother that they could only remove a piece of the tumor because I was so tiny he didn't want to risk damaging the newly developing spinal cord. He added, she may need a future procedure, but this should help reduce the pressure on the spinal cord. He was right. When my mom re-tells this story to family and friends, she always begins to cry when she says, "after the surgery, my daughter stopped crying and smiled for the first time". She even has proof. The first professional photo taken of me at 5 months old, is with a half smile and eyes that looked as though they had just stopped crying.