Jaron Garrison
9/11/2013
Autobiography
I was born February 20th
1996 Los Angeles California. The doctors declared that I was a healthy young
boy. It wasn’t until much later that they noticed something was wrong. My
parents noticed that I was not responding when they asked me to do something. I
was also not eating regular food like an average infant would. To find out the
reason for this, they took me to a hospital where the doctors claimed that I
had a disease called brain attrify. Brain attrify is the deterioration of the
brain often caused by a virus. They told my parents that I was not going to
survive another year. Upset at what the doctors had told them, they called my
aunt who was, and still is, a nurse in the emergency care unit at OHSU,
Portland Oregon. She suggested that we move to Portland and talk to some of the
doctors there. After the move and after we got settled in my aunt scheduled a
meeting with a doctor who specialized in these kinds of situations. After
running several genome and blood tests they finally diagnosed me with VCFS or
Velo Cardio Facial Syndrome. VCFS is as common as down syndrome but is not well
known because it is hard to diagnose. Unlike down syndrome, people with VCFS
are missing a huge part of their chromosome, while people with down syndrome
have to many. There are a variety of symptoms with VCFS, I just have a very
small fraction of them. During my early childhood I struggled with a hearing
loss, mild asthma, artery development issues, learning disabilities, weak
thought muscles, being underweight, speech issues, and sinus problems. The side
affect of this is going in and out of the hospital for almost half my life with
the doctors doing many surgeries to repair my symptoms. The last and final
surgery was done last year to repair my hearing loss. Now all of the problems
are taken care of and I can live a normal life.
All of these problems contributed to a
tough time at school socially and academically. Socially because of my speech
and academically because of my learning difference. My first high school was
Cleveland High School with about 2500. Then I moved to a smaller private school
with 100 students. My third high school is my current school, SOAR.
I still plan on going to college and
getting a job like most people do. Having VCFS isn’t that bad for me because it
helped me grow more mature much earlier than most kids. Although it sounds
tough, I just think about having fun educating others about it. The more people
who know about it, the faster it can be cured.