Throughout my life, my biggest battle was not allowing my health to decide my fate. No matter what happened, I was not going to let anything stop me from my dreams. Now as I look back, I realize that my health did not deter me, instead it made me into the athlete and person that I am today. My dream of becoming a division one athlete developed when I was seven years old. I was lying on my couch watching the documentary "Dare to Dream". "Dare to Dream" is all about the 1996 Women's US Soccer team. It was made after they clinched the World Cup. As I watched the journey of Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy, I knew that one day I was going to be on the big stage. But as I was laying there, I also had to take in account that I could not stand up.
Now let's go back a few months to a cold, Spring morning in the Colorado mountains,
the sun glistening off the fresh laid snow peeked through the cabins handmade curtains. I rolled over on my makeshift cot and feeling the cold breeze breaking through the cracks of the wooden walls, while my two siblings and three cousins sprawled across the living room floor fast asleep. At the age of seven years old, I already had been skiing for five years in my favorite place on earth, Vail, Colorado. The feeling of gliding across the powdery snow made me feel as if I was flying. Laying in my layered blankets with the tip of my nose slightly frozen, I felt the anxious desire of the day ahead.
Every year my family made the drive through the mountains to Vail right after the best snowstorm of the year. My cousins, accompanied by my aunt and uncle, dropped their lives and made the trip with us. Skiing was more than an activity, but instead it was an entire family event.
I rolled to my side and felt a stream of blood coming down my face. As I pushed my legs off the bed to stand up, I found myself laying face down on the floor. While blood was rushing down my face, all I could think about was getting to the bathroom. With blood staining my nightgown, I used my arms to scoot down the silent hallway. I sat by the bathroom toilet with a swab of toilet paper on my nose. The bathroom door swung open when my confused mother walked in.
“Why are you making so much noise?” she asked me in confusion.
“Mom, I can’t feel my legs.” As the words came out of my mouth, I realized the severity of the situation.
Tears started rolling down my mother’s face, but I sat on the floor in disbelief. I was confused but I had not completely digested what this all meant to me.
“Honey, please come into the bathroom” my mom yelled across the cabin.
My mom met him in the hallway leaving me next to the toilet. Being a SWAT commander for the last ten years, my father knew how to keep calm in any situation. He walked into the room and picked me up off the floor. In complete silence, he carried me into his bedroom and laid me down on the bed. I laid in the bed while my mom ran in and out of everyone throwing all of our things into bags. Every time she saw me lying in the bed I caught a glimpse of her watery eyes filled with anxiety. With our bags packed and the skis tied to the top of the car, my dad sat me into the car. The car ride was a daze as we whipped around every curve as the flurry of the snowstorm flashed by the window.
After two and a half hours, we finally arrive at my physician's office. My siblings and I had gone to this physician our entire life, but when he sat there flipping through books the worry in my moms eyes continued to grow. The doctor instructed us to go to the hospital immediately.
For two weeks, I was visited by every doctor imaginable, poked and prodded, and still had no answers. The doctors sent me home with no diagnosis, but some antiobiotics that were supposed to do something. My time at home was extremely boring. All day, I laid on the couch and when I needed to use the restroom I would call to my parents or older sister to carry me. I would color, play cards, or read Archie comic books all day just waiting for something to happen. After two weeks of this, I woke up one morning and the virus had escalated to all the muscles in my body from my neck down.
I was rushed to the Denver Children's hospital where I came to find out my body had been taken over by viral myositis. Viral myositis is a rare occurrence when a cold virus attacks your muscular system instead of your immune system. My muscular system completely shut down from my waist down leaving me paralyzed. Only one in a million people have this virus so information is scarce. The neurologist told me I may walk in a year or I may never walk again. My bright, sunny spring day turned into years of pains. A few weeks before I was dreaming of going up and down ski slopes, yet I never imagined that in less than twenty-four hours my life would be turned upside down.
For months, I went through what no seven year old child should go through, but this did not stop me, because as I watched "Dare to Dream" over and over again. I never let the thought of not walking again cross my mind. I decided then and there that this was not going to be the end of my sports career, instead it was going to the beginning.