Portrait: John
My story takes place back in May of 2000 when I was 10-years-old. Around 5pm on a Friday afternoon I started having a bad headache. I told my parents about it and they handed me some Tylenol, assuming it was just my allergies. That didn’t solve the problem.
I later found out that I was experiencing a brain AVM (arteriovenous malformation) - a tangle of blood vessels that connects arteries to veins. It had started to rupture on the left side of my brain causing the pain to get worse. I told my parents I was dying.