As a young kid I dreamt about going to the Olympics like my father, I was quick, coordinated and had good balance…. That all changed on October 18 1988 when at the age of 13, I was diagnosed with a huge brain tumor! The fact that I was stoic and did not show my pain led to medical error where I was not diagnosed until I was almost gone! At first I was left in the dark as to the seriousness of my surgery and that probably saved my life as my spirits would remain high; the truth though was grim. Although I was lucky that the tumor was benign, it had grown to be so big that I would have 30% chance of living! I was to be the guinea pig in a brand new operation technique that would last nine hours. As the head surgeon, Nicolas De Tribolet and his team would be my guardian angels but there would be more. 

When I came out I was a complete vegetable for three days hooked up to life support. I spent a month in the hospital and when I was aware of what I had become I did not know why God had spared me. Indeed I was living my worst nightmare, I had no balance in a wheel chair, had my eyes crossed out with double vision and a nystagmus (focus moving up and down with head movement), I had no coordination of movements and had a slow, dull and monosyllabic voice! After a period of self-pitying I was placed in a specialized rehabilitation center in Toulon, France called Pomponiana and although it was a short stay for me I was inspired to fight my disabilities as best I could as the kids there had opened my eyes to real suffering. I vowed to do my best for them if not for me, I had no right to give up after the sad horrors I had seen… That is when an angel called Vincent Roussel dedicated his time to help me with reeducation coming to my house every day. He felt so touched seeing me in that wheel chair with my eyes crossed that he decided to give me reeducation two hours a day! His dedication and sacrifice helped me a lot and coupled with a rigorous schedule of writing exercises I imposed on myself, I managed to return to school!

It was a short stint as the kids would make fun of me and could not take it. I could barely walk with my eyes crossed out and looked like a young Frankenstein! Many people have helped me after that and thanks to hard work and God’s blessings I have managed to overcome many challenges in my life that were thought impossible in 1988. I walked 6 months after the operation, swam varsity in college, received a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree and wrote a book.

Although the aftermaths of the surgery are much less severe than they used to be, I still have all of them and continue fighting. My greatest achievement has been to meet my angel and soul mate on the internet while I was in New York and she in Madrid, Spain. She is from the Dominican Republic and after chatting for a month realizing we had so much in common; I decided to follow my heart and went to see her for a few days. Thereafter she also came to visit and after one more visit I moved with her. A year later I proposed!

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