It was hard to trust God, but now I've made a lot of sense of it in my mind and it has provided
I think a defining part of my life is my journey with vascular malformation. When I was born, I had a vascular malformation in my left cheek; It’s like a miss-formation of veins. So, my situation was I had twice as many blood vessels in the left side of my face as the right side, and they didn’t have a purpose for being there – they were abnormal vessels. They were just in a big knot, all clumped together, the blood moved through them very slowly, and they all fed each other – so it wasn’t like they were going other places, it was just like they were a swamp. It was like there was a ball or a large mass of them. My parents knew right away when I was born that something was wrong. I had been going to Seattle Children’s Hospital for my whole life to follow up with this, and they hadn’t seen a vascular malformation like mine before. I was actually the first patient, and that the surgeon ended up opening a cranial facial unit for things like mine.
Around the time I was five or six, one of the blood vessels got a blood clot in it, but it wasn’t a very concerning issue because it couldn’t migrate anywhere else, as it was stationary. It couldn’t go into my lung or somewhere harmful. When I first noticed it, it was just a purple blemish on my face, and I could feel it under my skin, almost like a cyst. Throughout the years it grew, and around the time I was in middle school it would do weirder things. A few days before I would get sick it would swell up, so I always knew when I was about to get sick. By the time I was in the seventh grade, I decided to have my first surgery on it because it became more painful. They extracted the blood clot and I recovered fairly quickly.
A year later, though, another blood clot popped up. With more research, the doctors found that if I just kept having the blood clot removed it would continue to reform somewhere else; The issue was the big knot of vessels. Therefore, during my sophomore year of high school I randomly decided to do something about it and got into a surgery a week after calling Seattle Children’s. During Spring break, they went in with the intention of doing as much as they could, and they didn’t really know what that meant despite the extensive medical imaging that had been done. It ended up being an 11-hour surgery and went into the same spot on my cheek. They ended up flipping my face open and removing a ton of stuff: all the blood vessels, as well as 20% of my facial muscle and put a sclerosing agent in some of my abnormal veins so that they wouldn’t be functional. It was a very successful surgery and I shouldn’t have any issues with it for the rest of my life.
However, due to the compactness and number of facial nerves, there was prolonged pressure on my nerves, which means I run the risk of losing movement in my face. After the surgery it was just a matter of how much movement I would get back, and they weren’t sure. I’ve gotten a lot back, though. I was extremely immobile on my left side; I couldn’t blink or really do anything, but now I can blink, and my smile is not symmetrical but it is far better than what it was. I can’t move my eyebrow on that side, though. But overall it was a very successful surgery recovery.
Through both of those surgeries I had the same anesthesiologist, who is my favorite person on the planet. She was incredibly inspirational and admirable, and I found that I really wanted to go into anesthesia because of that experience. Her role was to assess me before the surgery, make me feel comfortable, and made sure the anesthesia would work and wasn’t too much. During the surgery she was checking my vitals and administering the anesthesia, and waking me up after the surgery. Given she has had such an impact on my life I would love to afford someone else that opportunity and impact. Because of this experience, I’ve decided that I really want to go into nursing anesthesia. I’m really thankful, because even though I did not understand why this was happening to me, I feel like it’s very clear to me at this point. It was hard to trust God but now I’ve made a lot of sense of it in my mind and it’s provided a lot of peace.
