Holy Cow!!

It's been 5 years since I updated this deal. Where does the time go?

Kelley is 21 now, still living at home and still in a chair. She attends the local Community College and her favorite classes are Art, if fact she was one of the 20 out of 100 entries featured at a recent art show on campus.

She has to take the other required stuff too and in her English class she had to compose an essay. It was good in that after ten years it made her reflect on how far she had come, the challenges she dealt with and the realization of where she was in life at age 21 and in a wheelchair.

She allowed me to post it below.

And BTW, she made a 90 on it... way to go kiddo!

Kelley Holman
The Past, The Present, and The future

When you see the topic that I’ve chosen, you automatically assume that I am going to be elaborating the life of a famous actor, or that of some one who was very important though out history. I am not going to talk about a president or a rock band that made a number one hit, but in this essay I will pursue in describing the aspects of my life. I will speak of my life as well as I can remember it. Talking of the joys of my past, along with the big surprise, my life as it is today, and what I think might happen to my life in the future.

I think we should start with introductions, my name is Kelley Holman, I am twenty one years old, I have red hair (originally blond, I actually dye it red), hazel green eyes, my height is around five feet, two inches, don’t ask me how much I weigh because I won’t tell you that, also I am handicapped.  I live with my father Randy,

my mother Chantel and my annoying little brother Chase. We all live in a one story house in Arlington, Texas.

Let’s begin with the past. While I was growing up I was a pretty well mannered child, well after I turned seven. Before those days I admit that “I was "spoiled rotten” by my father. In other words I was “daddy’s little princess” I remember that he would take me to the moves, roller skating, to see ice skating shows, he would always buy me toys and clothes. Back then the movie “The Little Mermaid” had come out on video; my dad bought me that movie I watched it about three hundred times. I saw that movie so much that I actually pretended that I was Ariel and had lost my voice, by patting my throught and moving my mouth as if I could not speak.

My life was happy and care free. When I was eleven, my aunt and uncle invited me to come with them to Six Flags Over Texas. Near the end of that day, my Uncle was walking behind us and noticed that I kept straying off course, walking around like a “drunk person.” My uncle told my mother that he thought it might be something to do with my eyes or the fact that I was tired from the day’s events. The next morning we went to have my eyes checked. The doctor could not see what was wrong, but he told my mom to order me an MRI-Magnetic resonance imaging, is a non-invasive way to take pictures of the body. So we went to another doctor. After that was done the doctor told us that he would call us later that evening with the results. That night my father said that my eyes had began to cross, I went to bed after that, thinking that this was occurring just because I was tired. When the phone rang, my father answered the phone.  It was the doctor who did my MRI, he said to let me sleep in my own bed one last night and the next morning go to the Hospital, Kelley has a brain tumor, his words stunned my father. The next morning I asked my father “Why are we going to the hospital?” Dad said “don’t know”, trying not to sulk down in emotions. Then I said the words that I now regret saying at all, “Well, it's not like I have a brain tumor or something" That so famous last word will haunt me for a very, very long time. My dad had to bite his tongue to keep from bursting out in tears. I also remember that after the news we went to Target to buy books,

anything to pass the time in the hospital. I kind of remember asking some way to serious questions especially for an eleven year old to even be thinking about, things like, "Do I need to make out a will dad?" ... "I want you to get the best doctors in the world dad, will you?"  I asked my mom the night before the surgery if “I would be mentally retarded afterwards and wondered if I had been a good enough Christian in case I did not make it through.”

When we arrived at the hospital, we where directed to the Neurosurgeon, Dr. David Donnehue. He told my parents and me that the type of tumor I had was called  Medulloblastoma- A type of brain tumor that tends to occur in children, arise in the cerebellum (in the lower part of the brain), and spread along the spine. It occurs in 300 to 400 kids a year, normally age 2 to 6, twice as often to males as females. .

He also told us that my tumor was Malignant-is a medical term used to describe a severe and progressively worsening disease, is capable of invading into adjacent tissues, and may be capable of spreading to distant tissues. I was one out of 150 girls or so to be diagnosed with this cancer... IN THE WORLD! What are the odds? This makes winning the Lotto look easy, and we can't get close to that.

I was in the hospital for about six months, give or take a few days. While I was in the hospital I had been working to relearn all of my motor skills, balance, writing, speech, counting, all the skills that you learn as a young child. These skills where big obstacles for me to concur. When I was released from the hospital I still would need to go back into the hospital every now and then. My blood counts would fluctuate from time to time, other than that I was doing very well, I was learning more and more every day. I went back to school on August 12th, 1998 I was in seventh grade. When we went to the ARD meeting for me, that is where the school system assesses the plan for handicapped children, they thought Kelley would be a Pre-Voc student… meaning they would teach a skill like stuffing envelopes to give her a productive life. After 10 minutes in the interview it was decided that she was much further along in her development skills than they expected and decided to enroll her with mostly regular classes and a few resource classes. They assigned an aide to push her from class to class and take notes for me.

From that point on I continued to get better and better as the years flew by. I achieved great things, that of going through jr. high to high school to be in a junior collage and eventually attending a senior collage. I still get sad and down hearted when I think of my past. I always wonder why it had to happen to me. Then I begin to recall, “I could of died in there, but God had something else planned for me, he saved my life to do just that.”

One of the things I want to happen in the future, is that I would like to become a child life specialist, and work with kids in the hospital. Helping other kids that have the same or similar problems in their life as they were in mine. Helping to give them courage, comfort, hope, by being a role model figure for them. Telling them that, “When someone says you can’t; try your best to prove them wrong.”