The constant beeping of the monitor played through my ears like a melody I didn't want to learn. My eyes were heavy and hard to open. Everything was a blur of noises and foreign sounds. "Bri-Brittany, honey can you hear me?" I hear my mother's reassuring voice traveling closer to me. I open my eyes. I was okay.
When I was three my mother saw that one side of my head was quite larger than the other. After my parents brought me to multiple specialists and doctors, fighting them to know what was wrong and coming out with no answers, they eventually just thought they were crazy and I was just still growing. I was seven; my feet were dangling from the doctor's office bed. It was my first appointment with my new pediatrician. On that day, a normal check up before going into third grade, my doctor asked my mother if she'd ever brought me to see a neurologist before. My mothers stomach sank in that moment because she knew she was right all along. I was eight when I was first diagnosed with my traumatic brain injury. The neurologists told us I had an arachnoid cyst in the right temper lobe of my brain. A cyst is different from a tumor. A cyst is almost like a water balloon. It's a sack of water filled with spinal fluid. The first surgery I had involved puncturing a hole in the cyst to let it drain. When the cyst unfortunately closed up, I then had a second surgery to put in a device to help it drain when I was ten. The beeping of the monitors and the familiar smell of hand sanitizer and bleach became like a second home to me after that. The next eight years would involve 18 more surgeries having to do with my brain injury and another condition I now have called Reoccuring Papalomatosis, which was caused because of those two previous surgeries.
Hospitals and surgeries are all I've ever known. The days I'd have to skip school to go to doctors appointments were fun at first but as I got older and I grew to understand what was going on, they'd often end in disappointment and tears. I remember the time my parents and I went to the doctors office for a regular check up, only to leave realizing I would need yet another surgery. I remember the slow growing pit in my stomach as we walked from the hospital on the sidewalk back to my father's truck, as tears from my mothers' eyes were hitting the pavement with every step she took. Every surgery marked a milestone in my life and every surgery was a step in a hopeful better direction.
Looking at me, I'm not your average advocate for brain injury. I can live a daily normal life without the help of others. I do everything the way other people do, there's just certain things I may have to work harder at. I am just like the peers around me, which is why my condition comes as a shock when I tell people. Most people don't understand that brain injury comes in many forms. They will link us all together and deem us disabled or abnormal. But I like to say that I'm not disabled, I'm just differently abled. My brain injury affected the part of my brain that deals with math. Ever since elementary school, math has been the biggest struggle. My reoccurring papolomatosis has prevented me from being able to sing again. I can't play certain sports because of my brain injury, which crushed my dreams of becoming a softball player when I was younger. All of the anesthesia I've undergone because of my surgeries caused me to have short term memory loss and I had to learn how to work around memorizing things.
When I tell people I've had 19 surgeries the reactions are always the same. There's shock and sympathy, but sympathy isn't what I want. My brain injury has gave me a better outlook on life. My life to this day wouldn't be the same without it. I had to learn how to become strong at a young age; strong not just for me but for my family as well. I always told myself that no matter what happened, this would make me into a better person and I believe it has. In May, I graduated college with a degree in Journalism and Public Relations, something I had dreamt about for years. I've achieved goals I've set for myself and that I continue too. Its not easy, theres many complications that can happen with my brain injury. It's something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. Instead of being ashamed of it, I'm proud of it. My brain injury has made me into the person I am today.
