Just a Survivor story….
I got the courage to write this after reading what a friend wrote about her experiences in the video game industry. Mine is different. I am a survivor of a brain tumor that change my life forever. It also includes how video games helped me during recovery. I really hope others shared my sane feelings but unfortunately that wasn’t true at all.
I really wanted to fit in somewhere. And I tell my story you’re going to find out that as a kid, I didn’t fit in anywhere. Kids bullied me every day and teachers and the school didn’t do anything. My parents weren’t on the PTA, I wasn’t popular, I was just a loner who was described as an ugly girl who shouldn’t even exist. That also lead to suicidal feelings off & on when I was a kid. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have any friends, and there was no one I could talk to and nowhere to go. I was alone.
At the age of 11, in the year 1993, I was dying. For months I was getting sick and I had no idea why. I was having trouble moving my head because my neck would get very stiff. I would lose my eyesight randomly and then get it back. My hearing would go away and then it would come back. Fevers would come and go and I would often vomit. Kids in my class would tell the teacher I was faking for attention. So because the popular kids said so it had to be so. My teachers wouldn’t take it serious, they assumed I was faking for attention or to get out of class. I was often described as a troublemaker just because I would speak up instead of sitting there quietly on the floor.
Don’t tell my school describe me. But I was nothing like that. I was sick and I had no idea what was wrong with me. All I knew was, I was losing control of my body as the weeks went by.
By the time I was taken serious, I was crawling on the floor with my head down unable to support myself up. The nurse sent a note home to my parents saying I was ill and she had no idea why. My parents took me to my pediatrician and he said I had migraine headaches. Two other doctor said the exact same thing to my parents. And they watch their daughter slowly dying they didn’t know what else to do. They knew Something else was wrong with me and I knew something else was wrong with me but nobody could give us answers.
Then one day my father found a family type doctor Who took one look at me and said there was something wrong with me so he sent me to get an MRI.
What the new doctor found was an inoperable brain tumor just above my brainstem. often these types of brain tumors are not removable but a chance was taken to remove it. Yes I did survive the brain tumor surgery. Unfortunately I had to learn a lot of the things I was taught as a kid over again.
This proved to be very difficult for me because shortly afterwards I had to return to school, and I had to start junior high school.
I had never been beaten down more than I was in my first year of junior high school. I was humiliated every day for coming to class, I was embarrassed by my peers because I could not talk right yet. I was embarrassed in PE classes because I could not walk or run like others. I was very pudgy from the medications and most of my hair was shaved off so I look very ugly to others.
The history of bullies from elementary school repeated in junior high school. Nobody was going to defend me, and no teacher was going to help me. I was on my own. No counselor would help me or take the matter serious. They would just tell me just hang in there it will get better.
But I couldn’t take it, been tripped down the stairs, having locker doors opened and slammed into the back of my head with kids laughing.
I remember in PE classes, I was forced to join in activities that I knew I just couldn’t do. But the other girls with smirk and laugh saying; “You better play with us because you’re in this class too!” They had no interest in wanting me to actually be part of the class for good reasons, it was to humiliate me & to physical abuse me while using terns like,“We are playing dodgeball!” as an excuse to hit me with all their might or with a ball.
There were days I begged my parents not to send me to school, my parents didn’t always @want me to go to school. But the school made me go to school. One day I did not go to school. I played hooky and I stayed home with my parents. My parents decided to go grocery shopping and took me with them.
There I discovered something that would change my life forever but also later in my life tear my heart apart. It was the SEGA Genesis, with a video game called sonic the hedgehog on display. This new video game console, had a much different controller from the Nintendo systems. The SEGA controller with shaped bigger and was much easier to grasp. My father noticed how entertained I was while they were shopping and how happy I looked. So my father bought it for me. He also bought me a few other SEGA Genesis games too.
These games kept me so happy. I also found a lot of joy with Sonic The Hedgehog Who also became my first love, my best friend, my healer. I always felt that God sent me sonic the hedgehog. God knew I was suffering even though I survived the brain tumor surgery, but I needed a friend. I always strongly felt that way. Sonic what is my best friend, he means a lot to me. One day I wanted to share it with the company that created this character and the games. I wanted them to know how much he meant to me and how much I loved their games.
That was one of my goals to just one day visit the offices and be happy sharing my story with them. But unfortunately they made me feel completely rejected. They made me feel like I was wasting my time trying to speak to them. They didn’t care at all that their video games help me during one of the most difficult times of my life. They didn’t even want to listen long enough for me to talk. I felt like I was back in school in again being humiliated and told I should not of survived it existed.
And that’s the other part of the story I want to share soon..
