Mark Robinson Motivational Comedian Magician
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By commenting the people survive through a hard childhood and explained to the people how to turn it around and be successful for your self.
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Languages: English
Bryan Gibbs
Inside of a Rough Childhood
Back in 1997, I was seven years old and suffering from severe seizures and behavior issues, they had me on a lot of different medications. Some of the issues that I had were damaging property, hurting others, and hurting myself. These behaviors continued for many years. A fine example was in 1999, at Monroe Elementary, where I destroyed school property because they would not feed me lunch. In the morning, I got the van to Monroe Elementary and walked into the class to see a nice teacher and staff, then lunch time rolled around, I was hyper and happy and not getting any school work done. The teacher said, “Bryan you will not get any lunch until you finish that work assignment on that sheet I gave to you.” Then I said, “Why won’t you let me eat, by the time I get the paper work done the cafeteria will be closed.” I was really upset by the unfair situation and became out of control.
Because I became out of control, they took me to a room with foam on the walls, a quiet room. I pulled the foam off the wall and I lost my temper, I was not quiet. The school called 911 to remove me from school property. The ambulance came to take me away and get me to safety. They took me to the hospital and offered me some food, but I was not hungry. I did not eat because of the issue at school and withholding lunch for an assignment. The behaviors I had been having were tremendous and off the chart; as a result I was not safe at home with my mother.
When I was ten years old I was taken to placement in Pittsburgh. The placement was called Old-Concord. They placed me with a roommate. I was crying big time because I was far away from my mother and my family. A few months later I was in my room reading a book that my mother had bought for me. Suddenly, my roommate said, “Bryan,” with his fingers in his mouth. “I need you to stand and turn-around.” I said, “Okay.” He ended up raping me at that time, I did not know what he was doing and I did not understand. I was ten, innocent, and unaware of the awful pain that was being done to me. A few days later I heard the staff at the placement saying that he was caught raping another person. They took him to time-out to get some answers from all of the people he had raped. That is how I found out that I was raped by him, and that is when I began to understand; this is when my trust and security vanished forever. A few months later I was put into another placement called Reynolds Lane. There, I was strangled, my stuff got stolen, and emotional abuse was inflicted daily. I could not trust anyone, no one would help me. I was discharged from placement after having been away from home for two and a half years. Once back home, I started at a placement school where I was well behaved and then other kids bullied me in class, so my mother kept me home until a suitable class was found that met my needs. When I got out of the placement school, the place they found for me was called Good Hope Middle School.
While I was attending Good Hope Middle School, my behavior escalated to the point that I had severe migraines, which caused a grand-mal seizure at home. On May 1, 2003, I was not feeling good at all. When I got home from therapy I went to my bedroom and then started playing Legos. A few minutes later I started to seize. At 5:45 p.m., I fell down and I hit the Lego pyramid I was working on. My body had shut down. My mother had a way of sensing my seizures, but this time she did not get to me in time. I was knocked out in my bedroom, laying on the floor, convulsing in a seizure worse than any other I had had. Because my mother was in the kitchen making dinner and talking to my brother Mark, she did not realize I was having an intense gran-mal seizure until she called me to come eat, and I did not respond. Dinner was ready, she called me from the dining room a few times. She quickly came down the hall to find me on the floor, choking on my saliva, this was around 6:15 p.m. At this point, the severity of the seizure was clear. Mom propped me up from laying down on the floor to stop the choking. At 6:30 p.m,. my mother gave me Diastat to hopefully stop the seizure. Mom asked my brother Mark to hold me in a certain position, because there was blood coming from my mouth from biting my tongue and grinding my teeth. While my mom was on the phone, calling 911, my brother Mark began to pray to God to stop the seizure. The ambulance arrived around 6:50 p.m., I had been seizing for well over an hour. The ambulance crew realized they needed additional equipment and radioed for a backup unit to come and assist. The 2nd ambulance arrived, their primary focus was getting me onto the gurney and to the hospital right away. I was still seizing for such a long period of time and at this point, I lost memory, speech and mobility in my legs.
The next day I woke up from my sleep and was wondering why I was in the hospital. My mother said “Bryan welcome back” I said, “where am I?” she said “Bryan, you suffered a grand-mal seizure,” I said “ok.” Then I tried to roll out of the bed and realized my legs did not work. My mother said, “Stay in bed” and I did! While she got the nurse to come in and help me with my legs and figure out what was going on. They did the first set of tests to see if I had had a stroke. The test result came back ok, no stroke. The hospital did more testing to see why I did not have any feeling or mobility in my legs. All of the tests came back just fine, absolutely no medical reason for the paralysis. The doctor said “Bryan, your legs are paralyzed from the seizure. The brain signals are not getting through because of the damage seizures cause to the brain. It will be hard to track that on the tests.” The doctor suggested that I start physical therapy at the hospital to strengthen my legs and hopefully activate the brain signals. A few days later, after physical therapy, the doctor could see that my left leg was responding, but not the right one. I did physical therapy over the summer and tried to get feeling in my right leg. I was unable to move my right foot and could not walk correctly, because to my brain, my right foot was dead. As the year went on, I finished my time at Good Hope Middle School. After which I went to Cumberland Valley High School. My bad behavior decreased, and my severe seizures decreased as well. I still had issues with behavior and socializing, but not as severe.
As time moved on I became much more mature and independent to the point that I was actually awarded for overcoming challenges. The award said, “He has been a role model for other students in his class. He has an exceptional attitude towards school and his work, setting goals for himself and works hard to achieve those goals. Bryan attends classes at the AVTS in the morning and in the afternoon is employed by Giant Food Store, Flagship Cinema and McDonalds, all on a part-time basis. Bryan takes his employment seriously, he applied and interviewed for his current positions on his own without assistance,” (PACTESP).
After I finished with high school, I got competitive full-time employment, and my own apartment. I was becoming the adult that I had always dreamed of becoming. I am still continuing to work towards becoming independent like others, to have a life quality most take for granted. I also going to Harrisburg Area Community College in State PA.
Works Cited
“2011 Student Award Winners.” PACTESP. Pennsylvania Association of Career and Technical
Education Special Populations, 7 Mar. 2011. Web. 4 Sept. 2015.
October 11, 2015 • 7:00pm - 8:00pm | Mechanicsburg pennsylvania 17055 |
October 09, 2015 • 7:00pm - 8:00pm | Mechanicsburg pennsylvania 17055 |
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