When I was five I went into school and had a bleed on the brain. It was spontaneous and I had brain surgery the following day to remove the blood. It was frightening as it left me paralysed and it took me over 7 months to walk again and nearly three years to get back to normal. Then when I was 9 I had another bleed. I have an AVM in my head that has caused this to happen. I have had two lots of stereo tactic radiosurgery at Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital.
I am a very positive person and I work hard to overcome all that the brain injury has caused me. I am very keen on history and have spent hours looking into the history of the Tudors in particular Henry Tudor. I play rugby and I am obsessed with skateboarding. My favourite skate team are Baker and one day I hope to meet them and ride for them. I love listening to music and like a wide range of bands.
My brain injury does cause me to be depressed at times and one of the side effects I have is epilepsy. When I have seizures I am very tired and can be worn out for several hours. I get fed up that this is impacting on my life as I want to go out with my friends and I have to be careful that my parents know where I am. I get tired easily, but on the whole I do well in lessons. I am able to do triple science next year and am in top sets for lots of my subjects.
When skateboarding I like to film my friends and edit films of us doing tricks. I hope to bring out a DVD of us in October, when I have collected all the footage and edited it.
My bleeds have caused me a great deal of worry. This worry is a problem especially when I am trying to go to sleep at night, but I try to think about all the things I can do and not about what has happen I get annoyed when people don’t realise that I have been so ill, as they can’t see my illness. I get fed up when other people moan about simple things going wrong, when I have had to cope with so much.
On a positive note, in the future I hope to become a neurologist. I have first-hand experience on what it feels like to be the patient and would like to give something back.