me, but I couldn’t open my eyes to look at them. My daddy and my momma sat on either side of me, rubbing a cold wash cloth on my forehead. Once I opened my eyes, I noticed my cousin Tyler in the corner. I heard my uncle say, “It’s okay. It’s just Haley,” and I looked over in time to see Tyler hide behind his daddy, crying and shaking in fear, scared to death of me. He was too young to understand what was happening, but it was upsetting to me.

Someone had brought me balloons, the kind that have a picture on the front and a shiny back. I pulled them down to me and used them like a mirror: in the shiny light of the balloon, I looked like an alien lying there. The bald area where my hair used to be frightened me; I loved my hair, and now it was gone. My eyes were so swollen. I felt and looked like someone had hit me in the face and blacked my eyes. It wasn’t pretty. Somebody noticed that I was crying and moved the balloons.

[Section break]

I can look at you with both my eyes, but my left eye is totally out of focus. It drifts and bounces, moves on its own, and I can’t see anything with it. Once, when I asked my second grade teacher for help with something, she looked at me and said, “What are you looking at? Your eyes are going in every direction. Why don’t you look straight?” This really hurt me, and I made it a point to be crying when I got home that day. I told Momma and Daddy about what had happened. Dad wasn't very happy to see me crying. He knew that this teacher had given me similar problems before, and it was the final straw for him.

My daddy is a big man, about 6’4”, and strong. He grew up on Grandma and Grandad’s farm and has done his share of hard work: wrestling cows down to give them shots or slaughtering them for beef, baling hay, driving the tractor with the hot sun beating down on his back. He has brown hair, hazel eyes and a hot temper, especially when his kids are unhappy. You can tell when Daddy is mad because he starts breathing heavily out of his nose. I do the same thing when I get upset.

[Three photos: (1) Haley, a few years young, with her mother, younger brother, and younger sister on a couch, smiling. (2) Young Haley swimming with her father. (3) Haley in the hospital after surgery, with shaved head.]