The Beginning of the Essay That is to be the Story of My Life

When I was a freshmen in college, we had to write down a family story. All the other kids couldn't even think of a story, for me it was a question of which one. I come from a family of story tellers. Every Christmas and Thanksgiving my family get together and trade stories. It seems amazing to me that after all these years there are still stories I haven't heard stories, but there are. Some stories get told again and again, like my aunt Lily pissing on the grave of her husband's first wife. My uncle Henry bringing my Aunt Martha a baby possum in the pocket of his hunting jacket. Mine is a story I hear again and again as well.

The beginning of my life, and the most dramatic part, is only a story to me. I can not remember what happened nor did I know until I was told when I was thirteen. When I was sixteen months old, I was diagnosed with a neuroblastoma, a rare form of neurological cancer. In the three days it took to diagnose me, I went from being a healthy baby to being paralyzed from the shoulders down. My parents were faced with multiple problems, even if I survived the series of emergency surgeries necessary to remove the rumor on my spine, there were questions about follow-up treatment. Should they subject me to chemo-therapy? Especially since the chemo I would be put on had the possibility of furthering the neurological damage. Some physicians suggested that neuroblastomas often spontaneous remiss, and therefore there should be no treatment at all. The treatments being administered to such a young infant could have serious long term side effects including sterility, learning disabilities, paralysis, impaired development of the immune system, and stunted growth. When it became clear that I would survive the surgeries, and my parents decided to go ahead with chemotherapy, a neurologist told my mother that the most mobility she could ever hope for me was that I drag myself arm over arm across the floor.

When I was four years old, I skiied down hill for the first time. I didn't use any special equipment. I used my legs. I wear high heels. I have won amateur ballroom dancing competitions. I am an expert skiier. I have competed in dressage at the tri-state level. And yet, I also have trouble feeling the floor below me. I have walked through broken glass without noticing. I have been emergency hospitalized when localized infections in my feet spread up the lymphic system. Everyday I think about how far I have to walk, how many steps I have to climb. Often I come home with bloody blisters on the soles of my feet. There is no way for me to know that I need to stop walking, I can't feel the pain.

There is an old Garfield cartoon that used to hang in some doctor's office (I've had so many, it is difficult to keep them all straight). Garfield is standing on the branch of a tree, below him defying gravity, Odie stands on the wrong side of the branch. The caption reads" It's amazing what one can accomplish when one doesn't know what one can't do."

How is that for a start? Change the order maybe? I'm not confident yet. It seems to cut and dry. It needs more something, drama, prose. Why is that whenever I am confrotned with a challenge I get so overwhelmed and terrified?