I've battled with depression and anxiety and know how it feels to feel hopeless or that you won't get better. In a situation like this, it's important to know you're not the only one dealing with it. Surround yourself with people who make you smile even just the tiniest bit. Reach out for help, it's okay to think that you can fight it but, sometimes just having someone else see your health from another perspective could help you get better quicker especially from a professional or doctor. For me, anxiety happens when I'm in pain mentally or physically but mostly mentally. I like to think of it as a bully. The "bully" is anxiety and it comes after you when you seem vulnerable. Stand strong and ignore it. Just like in real life, if you ignore someone they become uninterested and won't come after you. If you keep that mindset, it could help you in battling anxiety. Depression is the hard one. You become uninterested, hopeless, and feel like you're being swallowed into a black hole alone. Besides professional help, I recommend finding those who care about you and knowing that each person truly cares for you. Fight against those symptoms. If you're religious, turn to your god. If you think no one will listen to you, your god will for sure listen. Sometimes talking to God about your problem can help. My anxiety would happen if I didn't have something to do so sometimes talking to God about my problems lessens the anxiety and weight. Through all of this, I have come up with the quote "A positive mindset, leads to success". Don't feel discouraged if you don't see progress right away. Your mental health is the same with any type of injury, it takes time to heal

It's not every day that you have a memorable moment. That makes each moment special in a way. I am always positive and uplifting even though there were days where the rain would cover my sunshine. At the age of 16, a junior in high school, I was diagnosed with cancer. This turned my whole life around. It was so much emotional stress and pain I went through depression and anxiety. However, there was always someone there for me. It was Him, God. After not going to church for so long due to covid, stepping into the church was amazing.

I rarely miss school even if I'm sick or not feeling well. That changed when I started having extremely bad headaches. On February 20th of 2020, the headache made me nauseous and I couldn't handle it so I called my dad to take me home. Along with the headache, I was having left side weakness and my lip looked like a stroke had happened. My dad and I decided that it was time to go to the doctors. I went the next day and the doctor did notice some left side weakness and said it might just be Bell's Palsy but she sent me to the ER anyway. At the ER, they took some X-Rays and found that I had a brain tumor. That devastated me so much, I could never have imagined that it would happen to me. The hospital said they couldn't keep me there because it’s an adult hospital so they sent me to the OU Children's Hospital. The first week at the hospital I wanted to go home because I didn’t like the hospital. It made me homesick and having to deal with the stress and emotional pain of having a brain tumor was too much. However, the kind nurses and caring doctors made it bearable. They really helped me by cheering me up and saying everything was going to be okay. After 5 days in the hospital I had surgery to get a biopsy of the tumor growing in my brain and to get a port; a device commonly used in cancer patients to get chemotherapy into their system. A few days later, the doctors had the results of the biopsy. It was a rare type of tumor called Germinoma. The next step was to figure out what kind of treatment I was going to get. They decided that chemotherapy and radiation was the best option. I didn’t know how chemotherapy worked but all I knew was I would lose my hair. That alone upset me. I was not awake when the doctor was going over what chemotherapy would do but I soon came to know what chemotherapy would do to my body after two rounds of it. My immune system became really weak and I always had to be cautious because of the pandemic and my health. It weakened my body a lot. The last day of each round was always the hardest. After chemotherapy I took an MRI to see how it was affected. I was relieved to hear my doctor tell me that the chemotherapy did very well. However, there was still a little bit of tumor left. I know the doctor talked about radiation but I didn't know that radiation was going to happen no matter if there was tumor left or not. I went on to do 5 rounds of radiation treatment from Monday to Friday for an hour each day. Chemotherapy really affected my immune system but radiation, I believe, did more damage to me. By the end of my radiation treatment I had never felt so fatigued in my life. I didn't know that it would continue on to affect my life after that. I can't do the things that I used to be able to do before. Walking long distances is hard and my fatigueness really changes a lot of things in my everyday life. Because I went through so much pain physically and mentally within 6 months or so, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. But, this experience proved that I’m really strong and if I can beat cancer, I can do anything.