Jessica's Journey Brain Tumor Survivor Scholarship

At eight years old, I was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor called craniopharyngioma, terrifying me and my family and forever changing my life. Post-surgery, I now take several medications and daily injections, and I started a healthy meal plan. While my health maintenance regime has challenged me, it's helped me develop responsibility and perseverance. Have you ever met someone who takes who takes nine shots per week, and a dozen pills daily? Due to my medical issues, I've had to develop a sense of responsibility, as I gain independence from my support system. After my neurosurgery, my parents did everything for me; they set alarms to administer pills and tracked my diet. We had to journal everything I consumed! Once I entered middle school, however, I took more accountability for my health. I’ll never forget the time I was dropped off at my favorite gaming hub. As I entered, I turned to see my ride leaving with my medicine and water bottle! I felt panic and disappointment at once. Although my gaming experience was shortened, I learned how fragile my mobility is in life. Developing my autonomy, especially at a very young age, has helped me learn to balance health with academics and extracurriculars. I've applied the planning and time management skills I've dedicated to managing my health to the rest of my life. I'm glad I learned how to take charge of my well-being and self-advocate, so I can pursue things I enjoy. For example, building a business from scratch or attaining a Computer Science bachelor's degree away from home. Living with multiple chronic conditions due to the tumor has also instilled in me an unwavering sense of perseverance, driving my pursuit of academic excellence and commitment to business success. Soon after the surgery, I suffered short-term memory loss for over three years. During that time, I realized I couldn’t do everything myself and learned how to advocate more by seeking help from tutors, and figuring out what I can do better with support from teachers. These resources benefit me with all that I do such as taking AP and Dual-Enrollment courses, running the school store’s website team, managing my business, and managing my after-school clubs. My condition inspired me to create Dareshift LLC in an effort to open up the world of gaming to others who are disabled or struggle with different conditions by assessing and resolving common barriers, by programming, launching, and actualizing solutions. Through Dareshift, I code and sell different types of combat and strategy-based games for teens. Over the years, I have achieved a large user base, published a plethora of games, and created blogs for my audience. Despite the obstacles my condition presents, I am determined to reach my business goals of creating fun computer games that are both accessible and inclusive. My goal is to ensure that everyone, regardless of their experience, background, or obstacles, can enjoy these gaming experiences and live on their own terms. My medical condition has helped me develop personally and academically, and I've worked hard so I can live a full life. Though my condition has made my life more difficult in many ways, I will always focus on how it's helped me grow into a more accountable, conscientious, level-headed, determined individual. As I embark on my college career, the independence I've developed will help me achieve my goals in computer science and scale Dareshift. By blending my academic endeavors with my entrepreneurial vision, I aspire to drive innovation, lead impactful initiatives, and mentor peers, while I make a lasting impact on my college community and beyond.

By using my experience as a primary brain and secondary spine cancer survivor current patient, and epileptic as a result of it, I will be able to better understand what hospitalized children require. I will use these experiences to help them as a CCLS inside a hospital. Having this experience I also know how to explain all the medical procedures that come with being a cancer patient, like MRIs, CT scans, EEGs, chemotherapy, port access for treatment, and surgery. My experience with these things will allow me to explain what happens during these procedures, as I have experienced them all. As well as witnessed them through my friend's brain cancer journey and cousin's bone and lung cancer journeys. I didn't recieve radiation treatment, but the two of them did. I will be able to use their experiences to show children what happens with their body through the side effects they experienced with chemotherapy and radiation vs. my experience with just chemotherapy. A good example of those would be the hair loss, mine only thinned out, but they both lost theirs. I have spent 22 years being a cancer patient, and I want to take this experience to help hospitalized children. The craniotomies caused so much scar tissue, that it was pressing down on the temporal lobe and inducing hundreds of seizures a day. Now that it has been fixed, this experience will allow me to help those children who might go through the same experience. It allows me to explain what an EEG is, and how you should be careful so you don't pull the leads off because of the reaction to the glue. As I got my Associate's degree in child development, I worked with preschoolers while my tumor was stable for 10 years after finishing the last round of chemotherapy. After COVID we found out that the tumor wasn't benign anymore, when the pressure of a cyst caused a seizure. The MRI showed that, that cyst was growth of the tumor, and it was now malignant. The followed biopsy showed that it went from a Grade II PXA to a Grade III APXA. This made me want to go back to school for my Bachelor's degree, and work towards getting a CCLS certification to help those hospitalized patients understand what is going on. By using all of my experience as a childhood cancer survivor and current cancer patient, I will be able to help hospitalized patients through my own experience in the hospital setting. This will allow me to help those children and their families get through the stressful experience that comes along with being a cancer patient, and how they can navigate their lives in and out of the hospital at the same time.