This is my first term back at LCC after being out for about 7 months for a big surgery. My passions are for film, music, and skateboarding. Some of my favorite films are The Big Lebowski, Boogie Nights, Sideways, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Dark Knight, Wonderboys, Jackie Brown, This is Spinal Tap, and Best in Show. I listen to a lot of hip hop, funk, soul, and old reggae.

I had to get a new student ID tuesday, and looking at it next to the one I got just over two years ago when I first started at LCC, was shocking, so I choose to use it as my photo, and tell the story behind the change.

When I first started going to school here at LCC, I was very sick. I didn’t know it yet, but I had a belly full of cancer. Like a lot of people, I didn’t have health insurance until the ACA took effect in January 2014. Once I got insurance I found out that I had very advanced colon cancer that had spread through my bladder.  Over the next year and a half, I had a major surgery and tried three different types of chemo. None of the chemo worked very well, and I was told for most of the time that there probably wouldn’t be anything that could get rid of all the cancer.

After they tried everything they could in Eugene, I went up to OHSU to talk to a surgeon about another major surgery. I had to do daily radiation treatments for just over five weeks just to shrink it down enough to try the surgery, and the surgeon said the chances were not all that great they’d get it all, and there was a chance of “life threatening bleeding”. After the surgery, however, he said it went as well as it could have and he was pretty sure they had gotten all the cancer. Recently I had a CT scan that confirmed that. My oncologist said it showed “no sign of cancer”.

So now I’m back in school, and I’ve switched my major from Biology to Media Arts. I’m planning to transfer to UO and major in Film Arts, probably with a minor in some kind of digital art.