preschool-middle school

recital costume

my love for the smokies started early

Princess Wildflower

1st halloween in my wheelchair

cake fight birthday

Colorado

Colorado

My mom & dad knew something was wrong before I was 2, because I was so wobbly when I was sitting or standing. The doctor's told us that I had mild cerebral palsy, and it wouldn't get any worse.

I had a great time in gymnastics classes with my friends Lisa & Jen. I loved the running, tumbling and the trampoline, my instructor told my mom I had great muscles in my legs, the only thing I had trouble in was the balance beam. Then I took dance classes, and was in a recital up on stage singing "Hey Good Looking".

Things got a little harder as I got older. I got frustrated when everyone else in the neighborhood could ride a 2 wheeler bike, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't do it. The neighborhood kids would try to help. Once I actually went around the whole block, but usually would end up hitting into fences or falling. Everyone else would go off riding their bikes ande I felt left out. As they got a little older they started riding their bikes to school, but my mom always would have to drive me there. I had a lot of fun Halloweens running around with my friends door to door going trick or treating. When I was 10 years old, I had to come up with a costume that would make sense of being in a wheelchair, by that time it was too hard to walk distances and I wasn't able to keep up with my friends running house to house.

When school started and we would have PE. I did great on the pulls ups. but I would fall a lot on the track, so I brought my own bandaids and neosporin to school for the scapes that I got. As I got older, around 7, I started loosing the pigment on my dark Florida tanned, Italian face and had large white spots popping up. Then I started drooling, something you don't see many 3rd graders doing, that year I had gotten braces, and maybe because of being more aware of my mouth, or maybe just trying to keep it closed more, the drooling eventually got better. The problems with balance were geting worse. When I started losing my pigment around my mouth and thats when the bullying started kids would call me milk mouth, stuck kick me signs on my back etc. I think it was also in 3rd grade I started loosing my balance so I couldn't stay in line so in school I would kind of weave or go side to side on the sidewalk.

The doctors finally realized I had something called Ataxia Telangiectasia, because I was walking into walls and falling down all the time.

When I was in 4th grade, it was too hard to walk to the cafeteria, library or anywhere outside the classsroom, so I got my 1st wheelchar and decorated it with Chicago Bulls and Cubs bumper sticker and gave the same support ot the Florida Marlins and the Heat. Its always taking me longer to write than the other kids in my classes, by the time I got in 4th and 5th it took so long I needed help. Then in middle school I got a permanent aide to read and write cause my tremors were starting worse. Now reading still manageable but writing barely manageable. One thing I cant do is read out loud.

When I was about 10 years old I took horseback riding lessons for awhile but I stopped because it got too hot in the summer in Florida, but I loved it. Then after high school I started riding again for a few years. It was starting to get pretty hard towards the end of the lesson because of my weakening muscles. Then after a few years I stopped because of money problems and I needed a break, now a days my back is getting worse but someday I'd like to try it again. For my 11th I had a big sleepover/pizza party. So when it came around time to have cake my parents decided to leave us alone, it was a big mistake. Because one girl decided to start a cake fight, so a few of us decided to tape underwear above the kitchen doorway we even put tennis balls in her bra, my mom even helped. For a couple years after we found cake and in the weirdest places, so to this day it is still know as the cake fight birthday.

For my 13th birthday we went to Colorado. The day we arrived my parents pushed me in a pile of snow and on the way to the room I kept saying my ankles are cold, my mom kept dismissing it so finally she felt them and they felt like icicles. Once we went to dinner and the waitress asked if I wanted ajus with my steak I looked at my parents weirdly because I thought the waitress said ah-choo, I thought she sneezed. There was this little town we ate breakfast at alot, so one morning we ate at this restaurant that had stories of ghosts sightings so that night I had nightmares.

In middle school I started loosing my hair, first it was the size of a dime, but it kept getting bigger and my mom would have to put a hairpeice over it to hide it, no one at school ever figured that out. When I started middle school, many of my grade school friends got sent to different schools, and being with new kids in most of my classes, most of them didn't know me. I have always been shy around new people, and feeling so different, I had fewer and fewer friends. I was now in a wheelchair all of the time. I had an aide that helped me get around the campus, and could help me write since that was getting much harder, and it took a lot of time, also in middle school I didn't have as many friends part because of my shyness and part because of my wheelchair, so I quickly learned who my true friends are, girls that I grew up with and knew them since I was about 2 years old, (Lisa, Jennifer, & Colleen). In my classes in middle school I had a few friends. In 7th grade I had a little microphone with a battery pack to use in all my classes. I thought it would be so cool, but I hated it, it was like carrying around a briefcase and it looked like something from the 80s. My teachers kept pushing me to use it eventhough I hated it, so we finally decided to get rid of it.