My
life all started during a racquetball tournament, which
my mom and dad were competing in, and my mom realized that
little Spenser was going to come out soon. They quickly
rushed to the hospital, where the doctor and my dad made
a bet. My dad thought that I would be born on the 12th of
April, and the doctor thought that I would be born on the
11th. Let's just say that my dad lost 10 dollars that night.
I was born at approximately 11:55 on the night of April
11th, 1987, and my life began.
Well, for the first 16 years of my life, I was rather immature,
and you couldn't get me to sit still for more than fifteen
minutes, and not much has changed since then. We're going
to skip those years, because they're not very interesting.
The really interesting part started in April of 2003, because
a girl finally showed interest in me, the first time in
almost five years. The day of my sixteenth birthday, I was
asked out, I had to wait until my sixteenth birthday because
I'm a Mormon, and my religion doesn't let me date until
I'm 16. I said yes, and this is where the chaos begins.
It was a normal first relationship, very very awkward. A
few months passed, and it was still very awkward, and the
on the day of July 10th, we broke up for the first time.
I was rather unaffected, or so I thought. Exactly one week
later I had to be rushed to a hospital because I couldn't
move. Confused? Let me explain.
I had just spent the night at my friend, Steven's house.
It was a normal guy sleepover, we stayed up until about
1 A.M. Playing video games and eating ice cream, until we
reached the point where we couldn't stay awake any longer,
and passed out from exhaustion on his couch. I awoke the
next morning very tired. I tried to turn my head over to
look at a clock to see what time it was, but my head would
not respond to my commands. At this point I knew that I
was very tired, and decided to go back to sleep. A few hours
later, I was awoken by a pillow hitting the back of my head,
as I lay on the couch still very tired. It didn't affect
me much, Steve is pretty weird sometimes, so I went back
to sleep.
The next time I awoke, however, was different. I awoke to
people shouting my name and telling me to try and move my
head. I couldn't because I had puked and it had stuck my
head to the couch. I tried to lift my head off the couch
with all my might, but nothing was responding. Finally,
after what seemed like forever, someone had the bright idea
of trying to help me. With their help, I was able to lift
my head off the couch, but I couldn't keep it up for long.
They then helped me to walk to the bathroom, where they
told me to undress and get in the bathtub. I tried to do
so, but, if I could barely walk, what made them think that
I was able to get undressed and hop in a bathtub? They got
me into the bathtub, and gave me very little water with
which to wash the puke off of myself with. Steve's dad thought
that I would drown, but I just wanted more water.
After what seemed like an eternity sitting in that bathtub
with very little water and a terrible neck pain, I was able
to get out of the bathtub and get some clothes on. I put
some clothes on, and none of this seemed strange to me at
all, which just goes to show how sleepy I was at the time.
Waiting outside the bathroom was my dad, ready to take me
to the hospital, because Steven's parents had called him
and told him what happened. They all helped me walk down
the stairs and my dad helped me get into the car, where
I once again fell asleep on the short drive to the hospital.
Once we got there, I don't exactly remember what happened,
but I remember lying in a hospital bed. Next to me was a
grandma, who kept throwing up, because she had fallen off
her lawnmower and broke her hip. The doctors kept talking
about doing a procedure called a spinal tap, where they
stick a big needle in my spine and take out some fluid to
see what's wrong. They finally decided not to do that. I'm
lucky they didn't, but I'll talk about that later.
They decided to have a helicopter come and pick me and bring
me to a hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After about
half an hour of waiting, they put me into a wheelchair and
wheeled me out to the helicopter waiting outside. They strapped
me in tight, and I took off on the most expensive helicopter
ride that I will never remember, because I fell asleep again.
I awoke in a different hospital in Minneapolis now, just
as the nurse was putting in a catheter. It wasn't very fun
and there was a lot of screaming after that.
Eventually, I fell back asleep and woke up a day or two
later in a room with my family surrounding me. I had no
clue that had really happened. I remembered that I spent
the night at Steve's and what something wasn't right, but,
I didn't actually know what was wrong. Neither did the doctors,
which is why they had to do a lot of tests, which weren't
very fun.
For the next three weeks,
I stayed in a hospital bed, and watched T.V. With a slight
bend in my neck and no attention span, I tried to stay awake.
During this period, my muscles had pretty much deteriorated
in my legs, so when I tried to walk, it was a little difficult.
Also throughout this time, my friends came to visit me,
the first one being my best friend Ervin, who brought me
a bag of licorice, my favorite candy in the world. While
I was sitting in a hospital bed, most of my friends were
at Gen con, a convention with lots of board games and other
nerdy things. I wished I was there, but on their way back
from Gen con, they stopped in and gave me some presents
and played some card games with me. I eventually got to
walk around with my friends, which, at the time, was very
impressive for me. I had to lean on their shoulders of course,
but, I was walking none the less.
They had finally figured out what was wrong with me, it
turned out that an artery in brain had built up too much
pressure and had exploded. After the three weeks of sitting
in the hospital bed, I was finally able to go back home,
only to return a week later to have the actual surgery to
remove the faulty artery. On August 13th they brought me
in for surgery and it took seven hours, but it was just
a blink to me. For the first two days, my head was a little
swollen, and I had no hair because they had to shave it
all off. On the third day I got to go back home and let
my physical therapy begin. For an hour or so each day, a
physical therapist would come over and help me rebuild my
muscles.
In a little more than month, I was in school with all my
friends, and was totally back to normal, except for the
fact that I couldn't get hit on the head, couldn't run or
do any activity of any kind. I just walked around with a
half bald head and felt good to be alive. I went to homecoming
and did everything that normal teenagers do, including going
back out with my previous girlfriend; Then she dumped me
again, and life went on.
Then, after half a school
year later, I was offered the opportunity to go to Japan
with my Japanese class. I, being the adventurer that I am,
wanted to go more than anything. It turned out to be a really
awesome experience, and I got to know some people better
while there, people I never would have even thought of talking
to in America. On the trip there and back, I got a total
of about an hour of sleep. So, I was really nice, and gave
me my own room to sleep in and took me to a shrine, where
I saw a bunch of
katanas, the one thing that I
wanted to buy the most in Japan.
After, all the American students went to and English camp
for Japanese students and taught them how to speak English
a little better, and we got to meet some really neat kids
there. When the kids left, all the counselors cried and
all the kids cried and it was a truly great experience.
We also got a free day to go and do whatever we wanted to
in Tokyo, and my friend Jackie and I went to Akihabara,
and spent over 300 dollars total there. Then we went on
an all-day search for Dance Dance Revolution, a really addicting
video game that you use your feet to play, but we never
found it.
So I have now had two
experiences of a life time, and I'm only seventeen, one
due to a lot of blood spilling into my brain, and the other
one was due to my Japanese teacher. My love for Japanese
culture started around the same time that I learned that
most of my video games came Japan, and my fondness for Anime.
Boy, am I glad that I played video games from a really young
age, and that in 5th grade I decided to listen during our
brief introduction to Japanese. It just seemed so interesting,
and I'm still glad that I took it in High School.
I can only think what the rest of my life will hold for
me…
