By Samantha Sewick
The Sailors’ Log
Mona Shores HS
1st Place Division 3, News Writing
Personality Profile
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Lead captures attention, arouses curiosity; reason for sketch is made clear early in story
- Emphasizes fresh angle; individualizes person
- Colorful, lively presentation; effective form/style
- Reflects adequate research, sound interviewing techniques from a variety of sources
- Avoids encyclopedic listing of subject’s accomplishments
- Effective use of quotes
- Interesting; appeals to the emotions
- Proper diction/grammar
Writer
On the morning of Jan. 4, 2019, Lily Fisher, then a sophomore, woke up like it was any other winter break morning.
She showered, ate breakfast and prepared for the day. On this particular Friday, she was going to meet some friends to go on an ice skating adventure.
However, a headache started to ruin the fun.
Eventually, what she thought was a migraine became Fisher vomiting and becoming dizzy.
“My head started throbbing, and I started to lose my balance,” Fisher said. “I couldn’t even walk.”
Her mom called her doctor, whose advice was to stay home and wait it out. Only her mom wouldn’t take waiting for an answer.
It was then that her mom decided it was time to head to the hospital.
“It was the scariest experience of my life,” Fisher said. “One minute, I was fine. Then the next, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.”
Once she arrived at Hackley Hospital in Muskegon, a CT scan revealed the truth – her brain was bleeding. So she was transferred to DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids.
When she arrived, surgeons put a hole in her head to relieve the pressure and drain the blood via a tube.
The next morning, Fisher had another procedure called an angiogram, which involved putting a catheter in an artery in her leg that travels up to the brain where images were taken.
After what felt to her and her family like forever, Fisher was diagnosed with what’s called an AVM, an arteriovenous malformation. This means the connections of veins and vessels in the tissue are abnormal and tangled.
Diagnosed with AVM meant that Fisher would need to have a craniotomy, where part of her skull was removed to give doctors access to her brain.
On Jan. 10, surgeons made an incision from the middle of her head past her ear, removing part of the skull to gain access to the AVM. Using a high-powered microscope, surgeons removed the AVM, then closed her skull with a titanium plate and screws to coomplete the seveen-hour surgery.
“I spent 15 days in the ICU recovering. I couldn’t even wash my hair, and I didn’t have fresh air,” Fisher said. “I felt so trapped.”
Once Fisher was released, her whole life changed. Her focus shifted from what she could do to what she now couldn’t ever do again.
“Everything from before is totally different,” said Fisher, who is now in her junior year and preparing for college applications. “I used to have 20/20 vision, and now, everything gets blurry. The lights are another constant thought for me. I was always in choir, and I used to play the ukulele, too. Now, I can’t even go near that wing because of the pitches and the way it affects my brain. It causes too much pain now.”
Fisher’s life changed, but her surviving attitude did not. Her resilience shines through as she adapted her life to meet her newfound challenges.
“It used to be like ‘Oh, I can’t do that anymore,’ so my life is totally different,” she said. “Every day is different. Some days, I can listen to music in my car, and others, I can’t even turn the radio on. I just go day by day now.”
Playing it day by day can be seen as an issue to most but not to Fisher. She makes the best of what cards she was dealt.
“It’s a roller-coaster, you know, but I’m not getting off,” Fisher said. “I’ll keep riding it as long as I can.”