DANI'S STORY

So Here’s What Went Down...

I was living my life like any normal 15 year old teenager. My biggest worries included; how long until my braces came off, if my crush liked me back or if I by some miracle passed my math test I forgot to study for. These are normal problems for 15 year olds to worry about. Unfortunately, these quickly became the least of my worries. 

One night, while sitting at the dinner table, I realized I couldn’t see out of my right eye. Exactly a week after that moment, I was getting prepped for an emergency craniotomy to remove a tumor the size of a golf ball in my brain. 

I had less than a week to absorb the information I was given. I tried to not let it occupy my mind and focused on other things, even though it wasn’t easy. The night before my surgery was when it really hit me. I was anxious about my hair and how it was going to look, how I was going to feel and even how people were going to look at me after. Truthfully, I wondered if I was going to survive. 

I honestly did not know how any good could come from this. But somehow I found it! One day, post-surgery, while sitting in my hospital bed, my grandmother dropped off a box full of silk scarves. One silk scarf after another covering my freshly shaved head gave me a sense of joy and made the brutal recovery bearable. One afternoon, my father and I looked at each other and started thinking about creating my own scarves. 

In the Summer of 2017, one of the best Summers of my life, while in the process of creating my brand, I found out that the little devil had grown back. I doubted myself that I could do it again. I had already gone through it once, with complications and setbacks, and could not fucking believe it was happening again. 

So I won’t bore you with the details (and there are a ton of them), but this time they didn’t have to shave my head (yay for small wins!). Instead they went for a transsphenoidal (aka from the nose) approach (they could not do this the first time because the tumor was too big and couldn’t be reached that way). 

Although this was supposed to be a much easier surgery, and have a lot less recovery time, it came along with 10x the complications! This meant pneumonia, meningitis, a csf leak, fasca patches, a seizure, induced coma, additional procedures, more scars, months of recovery and soooo many needles (my biggest pet peeve which is kinda ironic). 

After seeing a ton of doctors, having literally every medical test in the book, going through 3 major brain surgeries and I think it is safe to say I have been through hell and back. 

As in turns out worrying about my braces and boys seemed like pretty good problems to have. 

I have met an abundance of characters along the way (many of them angels), I swear I should have made a TV show. From the nurses, to the doctors and technicians, administrative teams, I have stories that I can tell for years. 

One key thing that I learnt from all this is that bad bitches do not get defeated. No matter what happens, we all can make it through. Because the hardest battles are given to the strongest soldiers, and I am certain about that. It is hard to find beauty in dark and scary situations, however if you approach it with grit and grace, I believe that you can find it. 

-Dani

****Let me just tell you this, no amount of Grey’s Anatomy can prepare you for this.