I will forever be known as the "seizure girl." In 2008, I had an Arteriovenous Malformation. AVM is a tangle of abnormal and poorly formed blood vessels (arteries and veins). They have a higher rate of bleeding than normal vessels and brain AVMs are of special concern because of the damage that they cause when they bleed. I had a brain AVM and it was extremely traumatic. When I woke up in Bridgeport Hospital, the whole right side of my body was paralyzed. After I was hospitalized in Bridgeport Hospital, I was then transferred to The Hospital for Special Care. There, I regained use of my right leg and right arm. Although it was difficult to regain use of them, I did it!
Before all that, I was just a normal student at Classical Studies Academy, an elementary school in Bridgeport, Conn. I was in the fifth grade, age 10, outside for gym class playing soccer. My long brown pigtails flowed in the wind like leaves on a beautiful spring morning. I was a happy girl with no worries. All of a sudden, I sneezed. I covered my nose with my hand and I asked my teacher if I could go to the bathroom to clean my nose. He said yes and I went into the school to the bathroom. As I was walking through the halls, I felt weird, like a spider was crawling up and down my body and I couldn’t shake it off.
Finally in the bathroom, I wiped and blew my nose and decided to call my mother. I said to her, “I don’t know what is going on,” but she couldn’t understand me, which was even stranger. I was slurring my words. So I hung up and walked out of the bathroom. As I was walking through the hall back outside to rejoin my gym class, I started crying for no reason. I was crying so hard that my nose started to bleed. The security guard noticed and helped me to the nurse’s office, which was right across from the security desk. When I got to the nurse’s office, I sat on a cot and started to shake. Still crying, the nurse was trying to calm me down. I motioned I wanted to write something with a pen and paper, but she didn’t understand me. She helped me lay down. The nurse called 911 and I heard the ambulance sirens in the distance. No more than 10 minutes later, I was on the gurney being rolled out of the school by the EMT’s. After that, I was out.
Three weeks later, I woke up in Bridgeport Hospital. Yet, I wasn’t myself. The whole right side of my body was paralyzed. It was horrifying. My father and my two favorite cousins were there. My father was shaving the right side of my head because the doctor had to shave the left half of my head because I needed surgery on my brain. He told me that I had a seizure. He said that I couldn’t talk or walk. I heard him, but I couldn’t put the words together in my head. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move, I couldn't even go to the bathroom. I had to get help from the nurse for everything and I’m not like that. I am an independent b*tch that likes to do things on her own. I hated pressing the button on the control panel for the nurse to come and help me do anything. It sucked.
I remember one time when I was in the “common room” — you know, the room where you can socialize with other patients. I was in a wheel chair and I threw up everywhere. It was so disgusting and nasty. I remember that I blacked out at that moment.
I was transferred to The Hospital for Special Care. I had a nice, quiet room with lots of windows and a full bathroom, as most hospital rooms do. There, I was challenged to the extreme. I had to regain my leg, which was possible, but I was aggravated all the time. I hated my physical therapist, I didn’t want to do the work to regain my leg and I would cry because I would get all frustrated at myself and at everyone. I was also angry at the world about what happened to me. I would always think, why me? Why did this terrible thing have to happen to me?
My family helped me by being there, supporting, and saying “Sam, you can do it!!!!” and “We believe in you!” My physical therapist had a lot of patience with me. She worked with me for about one to two months, helping me regain my right leg. I am thankful for her every single day of my life. My other physical therapist helped me regain some of my arm. However my right hand is still “recovering.”
One day, my father and brother were in my room, arguing about something and the television was going and no one was paying any attention to me. We were about to go for a walk with my wheelchair, when all of a sudden, I just got up and walked out of my room. I kept on walking and my brother and father were amazed. My father also had his video camera and he recorded me, taking my first steps after my “accident.” It was a miracle. The doctors said that I wouldn’t walk or talk again, but I proved them wrong!
As I got stronger, I had most of my leg function back, so I thought that I was strong enough to go to the bathroom on my own. I was wrong. I fell in the room with the curtains all closed because I hated seeing all the lights and the noises were annoying. I picked myself up and made it to the bathroom. I was so scared and I have never told anyone.
How I ate was disgusting. Before I was eating regularly, I had a feeding tube that was all liquid. Then I tried “food” and I put that in quotation marks because it wasn’t real food. It was regular food, then it had to process into mushed food. It was disgusting. I hated it so much. I would never eat it and so I was using the feeding tube after a month instead of eating that s*it. I was stubborn. However, I was still getting Reese’s from my step-mother because it was my favorite candy.
My step-mother helped out a lot. Every morning, she would call my room at 7-7:30 a.m. Granted, I wasn’t a morning person and I hated waking up early (yes 7-7:30 a.m. was super early for me). Then she would come to the hospital and she would give me a shower. I hated how the nurses bathed me. They would be all hard and I didn’t like it at all. Anyway, after the shower, she would take me to physical therapy. She sat with me while I did my therapy, which I really didn’t want, but whatever, and she would cheer me on with the therapy. That happened every day for about two months and since she was out of work at the moment, it was no big deal.
My speech therapist also helped me a lot. I was afraid that I would never talk again. She worked with me day in and day out. She helped me with my memory skills as well. She would say three words, then I would repeat them, then she would ask again at the end of every session what those three words were. I got better and better has the time continued. My schedule was pretty rough; first I would go physical therapy, then speech therapy, then hand therapy.
I hated waking up every morning and having to deal with the fact that this happened to me. I hated that I had this ugly past. I hated that every day I needed someone to help me. I hated that I would never be able to do anything on my own. I hated that no one would ever know what I went through and that they would never understand the challenges that I had to go through, unless that person actually went through the same thing. That’s what I thought; that I wouldn’t do/go anywhere with my life without someone helping me.
Eight years ago, I had a seizure. I will forever be known as the "seizure girl" or the girl that walked funny. Now in 2017, I am a junior at Fairfield University, pursuing a Bachelor's in Communication with an Educational Studies minor. I never thought that I’d make it this far.
I learned from the whole experience to never ever give up. If I had given up, I wouldn’t be walking or talking. I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. If I had given up, I would probably be still in the hospital, not talking or walking and still eating from a feeding tube. I didn’t give up; I persevered.
Education is learning. That’s like me learning how to walk and talk again. I was learning how to do those things again. It is also about making mistakes. The faster that I learned how to talk and walk again, the faster that I would get out of there and it took forever. If I had worked more and tried harder, I would’ve gotten out of there faster.
