I am different, so accept me. Even though I have physical disabilities I am still a normal human being.

When I was four I had a brain tumor. The surgery left me with a paralyzed arm, crossed eye and a deaf ear. To make matters worse, the paralyzed arm was also my writing hand and I had to learn to be right-handed. When I was transferred from North Shore Hospital to Rusk Institute for Rehabilitation in New York City, I learned to use a wheelchair and was fitted for a brace that extended from my hips to my ankles.

After a year of that imprisonment, I started school. At school, I saw the other kids walking and I knew that I had to be able to walk also. My therapist, Phil Koch, gave me a walker and cut the bars that connected the brace to my hips to enable me to walk.

Over the years, I became a rebel and often disagreed with my elders. If I didn’t like something, I fought against it until I won. One example, when I started Stewart School, I had to wear a helmet for protection. I hated it because I knew I could walk without it. From second to fourth grade, I protested wearing the helmet. I kept fighting, but I knew I needed an event that would show others the injustice of having to wear a helmet. That occurred on my fourth grade field day. I was about to run the one hundred yard dash when my aide, Mr. Maddan, insisted we had to go inside to get my helmet. When I came back, the race was over and I was mad. I refused to participate in the rest of the events in protest. When I got home, I called my neighborhood friends and asked them to come over to help me destroy the helmet. For twenty minutes we played baseball with the helmet and my metal crutch. We simply destroyed it.

Events like this helped me to show people that I can be normal. I’m now entering my tenth year since the surgery, but its effects still live on. After eleven surgeries, I still look strange and my walk is affected, but I always try to be normal. I have progressed from a wheelchair to walking without a cane or crutches and now I only wear one leg brace.

My progress has allowed me to think that I can be the same as my peers, but I know that wish will be hard to grant. No matter how hard it is, I don’t care because I will always fight and never give up.