Interview With My Mentor

My mentor is my mother. She has been with me through my whole medical and personal journey (in fact, she's been with me my whole life). Throughout my journey, she collected all my records and dealt with our offshore insurance. This meant paying for my doctor's visits, collecting all of the receipts, scanning the receipts onto the computer and emailing them through to the insurance. It also involved many long phone calls to the insurance company and a lot of bad music. Mum also dealt with my personal problems (things such as the loss of friends, the stress of trying to manage pain, school, and doctors appointments, and frustration at missing multiple days of AP World History [basically a college level class UPrep students take in sophomore year]). She did all this and still found time to volunteer at Bethel Christian School and Bethel Church, run her own Kingdom in the Classroom conference, cook for her family, and tend to the problems of three other kids. If this doesn't qualify her to be a mentor for this project, I don't know what does.

Here's the interveiw (my questions are in bold Mum's answers are italicized):

Do you think you are the best choice to be my mentor? Why or why not?

"Yes, because I have been intimately involved with your journey and can remind you of some of the things that happened along the way that you might have forgotten. And I know the medical stuff."

How much medical background do you have?

"I have a degree in physiology and anatomy and I spent a year in medical school so I have a pretty good understanding. I find the human body and how it works fascinating so I have a pretty good understanding of how things work inside the body."

How do you think you can best help me with this project?

"I think I can help you by encouraging you to tell your story, that you have got something to offer other people who are going through a similar journey. I can help you by asking you questions and reminding you of things that helped along the way and things that you discovered along the way."

What are you willing or going to do to help me with this project?

"I think the biggest thing is to encourage you that telling your story can turn the pain into something that is of benefit to others and of benefit to you so I think encouragement is the biggest thing. You know how to write really well your dad's taught you some website stuff so I don't feel like I need to be involved with those pieces but the encouragement piece of this being a healthy thing for you and for others, I think that's where I fit in. I believe that we could go back through the medical records and see the timeline, the progress of what happened and track that down."

Tell me a bit about yourself...

"I'm a mother of four. I have a bit of a medical background, but now I, apart from being a mum, I work with teachers and enjoy helping them to be the best teacher they can be. I enjoy walking and hiking and reading and killing zombies...on plants vs. zombies."

Fun Question: If you were to do the 20% project, what would you do?

"That's a pretty hard question (bark bark from the dog as I unlock the door for my younger sister). I guess in some ways I am already doing my 20% project because I'm doing something in my work with teachers that's unpaid that's a project, hopefully, that helps them, that encourages them to see themselves as I believe they are, as powerful people, people who have the power to influence (unlock the door as you go out so we won't have to unlock it again [said to my sister]). So probably that. But there's all sorts of worthwhile causes and things that I could easily get involved with and be passionate about." 

So that's my interview with my mentor (my mum). My website is now set up on a free site builder called wix. Here's the link http://mystory2015.wix.com/myjourneythroughpain Enjoy!