A Brief Prologue

Before I start this blog I wanted to write a little about my history so that when you read my future posts, it will all make sense. My name is Jordan Smith. Early in 2003, I started having minor seizures. They were so minor that I had no idea what they were, nor did anyone else, simply because there was very little outward signs. In late October 2003 I was eating breakfast and when I grabbed the orange juice to fill my cup, I had a seizure but this time it was more serious. It wasn’t a grand-mal seizure but it caused me to simply pause and I couldn’t do anything, and my mind was blank. Because of this, I poured the orange juice all over my French toast! My parents noticed this and we went to the doctors. They scheduled me to have an MRI on November 2, 2003.

On November 2, 2003, when I was 13, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. If you’re curious on the type, it was a pilocytic astrocytoma. The tumor was so large that they operated on the very next day of finding it. It was 8x6x6cm on the left side of my brain. The first operation was 14 hours long. Besides the fact that I had a massive tumor, my body was in great health, thankfully.

The main side-effects were blindness in the right half of each eye, aphasia (the loss of speech and comprehending language), short term memory loss, cognitive thinking challenges, and I fell back to a 3^rd grade reading level.

Roughly 6 months after the 1^st brain surgery we found a cyst growing and taking the space of the original tumor. We continued to watch the cyst for another year and a half in hopes of it going down, but it didn’t. I had the strong impression that we needed to operate again to remove it all. The doctors agreed and on December 13, 2005 we operated again. They were able to remove it all and I’ve been cancer free ever since, but there was similar side-effects like the first surgery. Within an hour after my second brain surgery, I had a stroke which let me paralyzed on the right side of my body. Thankfully, I was able to regain almost all major movement within a year.

A lot has happened since these 2 surgeries. My epilepsy is still lingering and that is what I am trying to control now. I'd like to share my experiences that are going on now and ones from the past.