Skull Tumor

An unexpected illness changes a boy’s life

“Sit down,” my mom said with a smile. “Let me tell you the story of when God came through for you.”

It all started when I was a little baby. My mom saw something particularly important on the right side of my head. A bump? That’s strange, my mom thought, but she had no choice but to forget about it for the time being. So she slept on it and slept on it, and she slept on it even more.

Then she finally decided to do something about it. She set me up for an appointment with the doctor who we normally saw. We found out that there was a problem with my head, but the doctor didn’t tell us what the problem was.

In any case, that doctor couldn’t help. He was not the right doctor for the surgery. In the car on our ride up to Duke University to meet another doctor, my mom couldn’t take anything off of her mind and was thinking about the surgery, and if this was going to be the right doctor to do it. My heart raced like a cheetah. Exhausted, we finally arrived to see the Duke doctor after a long, stressful car ride.

We arrived at the office where they were going to do the surgery and waited there for a huge amount of time. The doctor, calm and confident, came into the room and said hello to me. He was one of the nicest doctors I had ever seen, and I knew that he was going to do well on this surgery. My mom was crying the whole time. She could not stop because she was scared about what could happen during the surgery.

The surgery happened. I don’t remember much of what happened during it. But I remember waking up and my mom crying and thanking God for all He had done for me and my family and the blessings He put on us.

This was not one of those things that just comes and goes in your life. During the surgery, they put metal in my head. I am not allowed to play football, lacrosse, or hockey for the rest of my life. As you can see, this has had an impact on my life but could have been worse without God. But today I am still acting like it never happened to me because there are many things in life that you have to overcome.