Jaron Garrison      

9/11/2013

Autobiography

          I was born February 20^th 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.