teenLook #6 - November 2019 - Arizona Skeoch
Remembering our Veterans is the focus of this November issue.
Remembering our Veterans is the focus of this November issue.
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VIENNA<br />
maryce<br />
TEENLOOK<br />
featured story<br />
The sensation in my legs suddenly disappeared;<br />
I literally thought I was going to<br />
collapse. I could feel my heart knocking against<br />
my ribs with crippling anticipation as the IDO<br />
President taunted, “Canada or Croatia?” I<br />
couldn’t believe after four gruelling elimination<br />
rounds, and the announcement of the bronze<br />
medalist, they still hadn’t yet called my name.<br />
One of the two of us girls was going to win<br />
that coveted Gold Medal!<br />
Tears streamed down my face as my quivering<br />
body stood draped with a Canadian flag. The<br />
cheering of the spectators from the 5.500 seat<br />
SACHSENarena erupted louder and louder<br />
as the German MC presented the runner-up<br />
video dance clip.......there were my gold Ruben<br />
Sanchez tap shoes up on the Jumbotron. Although<br />
a millisecond of disappointment hit me,<br />
I became overcome with emotional pride with<br />
the announcement<br />
that I was<br />
called to the podium<br />
to receive<br />
my silver medal<br />
at the World Tap<br />
Championships!<br />
It was at that<br />
very moment last<br />
December 2018;<br />
I would receive<br />
the international<br />
ranking of the<br />
second-best Junior<br />
Female (tap<br />
dance) Soloist in<br />
the World!<br />
To think that 3.5 years prior to this<br />
event, I was confined to a wheelchair<br />
unable to walk, was simply surreal.<br />
Flashback to March Break 2015<br />
At the age of twelve, while on a March Break<br />
vacation to Barbados with my dad, I felt<br />
something latch onto my ankle, leaving a red<br />
bullseye mark. A few days later, while inflight<br />
back home to Toronto, my one eye dimmed<br />
to darkness like a theatre curtain falling. Then<br />
oddly, moments later, I was able to see again.<br />
Two days upon my return home, I awoke to<br />
blindness in that same eye, so my mom rushed<br />
me to emergency concerned that I had suffered<br />
a detached retina. I ended up losing my<br />
vision and colour vision due to optic neuritis<br />
(virus attacking the optic nerve) and eventually<br />
losing the use of my legs over the course<br />
of the next few months. I was never officially<br />
diagnosed after being admitted to the Hospital<br />
for Sick Kids, but it is believed that a tick<br />
bite likely left me with either Lyme Disease<br />
or Chikungunya Virus, which at that time, the<br />
latter was widespread on the Barbadian island.<br />
I was treated with a round of antibiotics, yet I<br />
PHOTO / Tony Maher<br />
82 | teenlook.ca | VIENNA MARYCE
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