Let us relive a moment I stored in the history book, the very beginning part two.

The bell rings, its time.
I have to get up I have to try.
I slowly get up and I start to try and find my footing and take some steps.
I pick up my heavy school bag.
I make my way to roll call.
My friend Melisa is the first to see me face to face.
With a face full of worry, she says to me, “Marissa you don’t look very good, I think there is something seriously wrong, are you okay?”
I begin to tell her that I’m not feeling well at all and I don’t know what’s wrong.
I go to first class, just up the stairs in the drama room where my twin sister and best friend Alfina are in class with me.
The teacher starts talking and explains the agenda for the lesson. I’m listening but I’m not present at all.
My head is starting to pound and I’m starting to feel nauseous.
Before I can excuse myself I have to get up, look at the teacher like I’m about to throw up and I race out the door, down the stairs to the bathroom that is a few metres away from the school canteen.
I start throwing up in the toilet and I don’t know what crosses my mind, but I know something is wrong and in this moment in time I am where I am supposed to be.
My twin sister and Alfina hurry into the bathroom to come and check on me. Their intentions to check on me change as they realise as they walk in that something is seriously out of place. Both their faces are full of worry and when they look at me, I see a state of panic in their expressions.  
I feel as if the energy in the bathroom shifted as soon as they both entered, like a dark cloud surrounding me had lifted.
FYI: Until ten years from that first day, Alfina, my twin sister and I in a coffee shop chatted about that first day for the first time together. All three of us admitting we felt something unexplainable that moment in the bathroom.
I got up and the bell rings for second class. I naively started to head over and went up the stairs towards the classroom.
My other friend Annette is next to see me and straight away she asks, “Marissa did you not put makeup on today?” and I reply, “I have, but I am really not feeling well and was just sick in the bathroom”.
Her face raised alarmed bells and that was a few too many warnings with people staring at me with an unexplained worried look in their eyes.
I knew I had to head over to the office and have them call my mum to pick me up.
FYI– years lately I found out the reason why Annette asked me, it was because my face was actually yellow.
I get to the office and I finally call my mum. She is busy at work and isn’t making it the easiest to try and get picked up. I explain to my mum that something was wrong and how I haven’t been well for a couple of hours now and I urge her “You need to come get me and drop me home!”
My mum realises something is up and picks me up. Luckily it’s only a short drive, the school being only a few suburbs away from my house. While driving, I turn down the music, stop talking and sink into the car seat; signs that are out of character that my mum start to notice. My body starts shaking and mum soon realises she can’t drop me home and decides to detour and drop me at my grandparent’s place, so I am not home alone while unwell. Mum pulls up out the front of their place and I can’t get myself out of the car and she must get out and carry me. I am a complete dead weight and I am not stable enough to walk on my own. I feel weak from head to toe.
My grandparents hurry to their front door and help lay me down onto the bed in their front bedroom.
My symptoms are getting worse and I am slowly feeling worse and worse.
My mum hurries and calls our doctor in a state of shock.
We realise I can’t move my legs and my neck at all.
I am starting to become unresponsive.
And mum calls 000 right away.
The ambulance arrives and the paramedics check my observations and work out how they’re going to get me out of the house and into the ambulance.
My grandparents are in a panic and my dad has raced from work and is now following the ambulance in his ute.
The ambulance lights are flashing and sirens are ringing, but the paramedics are not driving fast as my heart rate is dropping and my situation is deteriorating fast.
My dad is stressing out while following us. My mum is inside the ambulance, sitting next to me and is not doing great herself.
The paramedics rush me into the hospital and I do an emergency CT scan.
I’m lying flat on a hospital bed.
My parents are standing behind my head and the doctors are talking to my parents.
All I know is I can’t move my head, neck, my legs or get up.
I hear the doctors say to my parents, “MR and MRS Mellick were treating your daughter for a haemorrhage in the brain”.
A moment my fourteen year old self will never forget.

Boy didn’t we know what we were in for…

I do the CT scan and it doesn’t show a big bleed.

The doctors think at first, that I might have meningitis. A medical condition causing inflammation to the brain and the spinal cord (a disease like Meningococcal that was common during this time).

FYI: Unfortunately, my younger sister at only two years old at the time had just started to recover from meningitis herself so it was a stressful and overwhelming situation for my parents.

But the blood tests come back clear…the doctors are now really puzzled. A nurse in the children’s hospital who also happens to be a mother of one of the students in my grade suggests something else and to do further tests.

They do a lumbar puncture also known as a spinal tap, it’s a procedure in which a needle is inserted into the spinal canal in order to collect cerebrospinal fluid to do further testing. The main reason for a lumbar puncture is to help diagnose diseases of the central nervous system, including the brain and spine.

I must curl into a ball and stay as still as possible, while my mum holds my hand and helps the nurse as she inserts this massive needle into my spinal cord and collects the fluid. I feel terribly scared, in extreme pain and uncomfortable. I feel like this massive needle was going to go through my whole body, was going to end up out the opposite side of my body and come out through my stomach.

I lay in the fetal position, trying my absolute best to stay calm and breathe. The pure fear of moving, makes me be as still as possible. The only thing that moves were the tears trickling down my face.

I am in the Intensive Care Department under strict watch and care. I am unable to move or do anything and I am in an extreme amount of pain.

The lumbar puncture shows blood in my spinal cord, and you are not supposed to have blood in your spinal fluid. The neurosurgeons organise an MRI scan with the contrast dye added to my blood stream. I must do a one-hour full neck and spine MRI scan.

From the MRI results the doctors find the cause and begin to discuss their diagnosis… it was nothing that my parents or family were prepared to hear let alone begin to understand.

They take my parents into a quiet room and explain that I have a spinal AVM, one that they have never seen before. They say, “It is the largest, the most complex and complicated AVM they have ever seen”. They explain, “it is a mass of extra arteries and veins that are not healthy and is an abnormal development that is common in children and teens that is extremely rare, and it could develop during birth or as the child grows but it is rare and not commonly known”.

They explain that the fate of my AVM is one that the doctors won’t be able to fix or remove, as it is in one of the worst spots and it goes through my spinal cord plus it is wrapped around my main arteries. The neurosurgeon tries to explain the best way he possibly can…” We can’t operate and remove Marissa’s AVM; she will die on the operating table. Marissa’s case is one in twenty-five million, she is currently the only one in Australia with this case and we are sorry Mr and Mrs Mellick, but your daughter is going to have to live with this for the rest of her life. She can have just one big haemorrhage and die instantly, or she is going to have small bleeds and is looking at a life permanently disabled”.

So yeah, thinking about it now, I don’t know how my parents felt in that room as they were told some earth-shaking news. I imagine they had no way to understand and process it themselves, let alone for them to have to be there with the neurosurgeons to help support me as they begin to explain the diagnosis to me. I don’t know how you stand next to your child while she already can’t move. How do you stand next to her and see her face as she hears them explain the condition she has and what was happening inside her body? How do you think or process when someone tells you have a time bomb in your neck, and you can die and there’s nothing the doctors can do for you…? Yeah, I don’t know how you can begin to try and make sense of that or try and understand why you out of anyone and everyone could have this condition.

This is the start of the roller coaster ride, the start of a physically, mentally and emotional journey that no one could ever prepare me for…

I have an outpour of support from my all my aunties, uncles, God parents and close family friends. They do countless amounts of research trying to learn as much as possible about AVMs, trying to find a solution and do anything they can do to help me.

The first day of the rest of my life, my closest friends and twin sister must out at the end of their school day, how now their friend and sister’s world has just come crushing down.

We are just kids in a world of the unknown.

Every day after school for five weeks my friends from the girls’ and boys’ high schools come in a crowd of thirty and patiently wait in the halls with balloons and teddy bears in their hands. Only allowed to come in pairs or maximum a group of three at a time. Each of them waits their turn, until they are allowed to come in through the High Dependency Department doors to see me.

I can’t move or eat for three weeks.
I use all my energy to see and smile and laugh with my friends. Even in these most surreal and overwhelming times my friends would wait, wanting to see me and even though I feel wrecked and exhausted after everyone leaves, I know it was the right decision to have them visit. I would never change it, because I needed to see them.

From that first day I end up admitted in hospital for a total of six weeks. For all the years to come I would have never of known what was going to happen or how much time I had or what I would possibly have to live through.

From that first day I start to experience agonising, constant, strong, exhausting, extreme pain and suffering for every second of my days. 

It is a mixture of emotions and opened a world of questions of how I would find out my why? How would I discover my strength? Feelings of sinking to depths of sadness and falling into the tears of pain. Fear of how much time I had and the end? Questions of where I would find my passion? Discover my purpose? Realising what truly matters? Learning the meaning of resilience and me slowly but surely trying to create my own hope.