My Accident

    When I was five months old, I was injured in a bicycle accident.  I was in a jerry carrier, on my dad's back, riding his bicycle.  My dad didn't see a chain across a parking lot.  We hit it, I went over his shoulder, on to the handle bars and on to the pavement.  I developed a hematoma (a bruise on the brain) and I needed a shunt (a valve that drains fluid from my head to my abdomen).  The first shunt failed.  It took six surgeries over a two-year period to find a shunt that worked.  When they found a shunt that worked, the doctor tried probing and probing, trying to get the shunt to go in, and he let me paralyzed.  Over twenty one of years of surgeries and therapy I am able to walk, talk, laugh, love, and can do pretty much everything with limitations.