On March 16^th, 2013, my life completely changed. It was a cold windy night and I was exhausted from a long day at school and cheerleading practice that I decided an early nights sleep would benefit me. Around 10 PM I shut my eyes and drifted into what I thought would be a great nights sleep. About 4 hours later I awoke with a jolt realizing that the entire left side of my body was not responsive. I was paralyzed from my left cheek to my left foot and I was completely unaware of what was happening. As I attempted to drag myself out of bed I had to physically pull my left arm and left leg to move from any still position. I didn’t care that it was in the middle of the night I was panicked so I decided to call out to my mom. My voice trembled and began to yell but the only thing that came out was pure gibberish. No words, no normal sentences, random sounds that could not be described as words even though I wanted them to be. My mom came running in to see what was wrong but I had no ability to describe to her what was happening. I started to cry, scared that I might be having a stroke. She understood that I was well aware of the fact that I was not okay. I knew what I wanted to say but my body would not form the words. After about five minutes of my words being slurred and the inability to move my limbs, I began to hurl. My puking did not stop for hours but my limbs began to come back into motion. At that moment, my parents decided I needed urgent medical care. My mom tossed me clothes to put on and my hands held them as if they had never seen a shirt before. My brain was not knowledgeable about what to do with these items. As we walked to the car, my speech slowly began to come back and I was able to explain to my mom what I was feeling. As this seemed to get better, my eyesight and hearing slowly started to drift away. The side affects were temporary but I thought that I would be blind and deaf forever. About five minutes later I was fully able to see and my hearing was back to normal but an explosive pain within my brain began. I have never had such traumatizing head pain in my entire life and I will never be able to shake the pain I felt that night. I wound up in the hospital for about a week as these symptoms kept reoccurring. No amount of morphine would take away the pain I was feeling in my head and no medicine would stop the vomit.

            This was the night that I realized I was a prime patient for hemiplegic migraines. Hemiplegic migraines are immensely painful headaches that cause stroke like symptoms. This experience was extremely life changing for me. I thought my life was over, or at least completely changed from that point on. It was the second time in my life that I thought I would never be okay again. I think this experience makes me worthy of a profile because it truly changed the way I look at life. I appreciate so much of what I didn’t before because I realized how fragile everything is. It takes years to build and create but only a second to destroy it all. This experience still gives me goose bumps when I think about the pain and suffering that I felt throughout that point in my life. It was one of the scariest things I have gone through, but made me the strong individual I am today.