Meet Tessa

Tessa:

Hi, my name's Tessa and I'm 19 years old. I love playing the piano. I remember seeing my dad and my sister play on it, and it kind of caught my interest. And from there I kind of just learned on my own.

Speaker 2:

Tessa was born at 27 weeks and five days, so she was quite premature and she developed pretty normally, but her pediatricians were kind of watching her and they eventually referred her to Shriners Hospital because there are experts there at Cerebral Palsy, which was what they were suspecting. And they thought that she would get high quality care there and would be an ideal patient.

Tessa:

So after I finished my first surgery on my leg, I was 11 years old, and from then I was diagnosed with pretty severe scoliosis and that I would have to have another surgery that next year. And when I heard that, I was pretty young and I was pretty devastated because it was my first ever experience having a surgery. And even though Shriners was amazing, it was still stressful for me.

Shriners Hospital means a lot to me because without them, I feel like my quality of life would be a lot worse and because of their care and their surgeries, specifically with my spine, since it was so curved. I can't imagine living life with a curved spine like that. And when I look back at the X-rays and I see how bad it was and then how easily they corrected it, I was like, "How do you do that?" It's just amazing that Shriners can help children like me. Thank you Shriners.