Mylynda Gill, a Keene State College student, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in November of 2014.
Every day, on top of fighting the brain tumor, Gill struggles to maintain good grades, hold a steady job and provide financial support for her family.
According to the American Brain Tumor Association, nearly 70,000 new cases of primary brain tumors will be diagnosed this year.
She said she has taken five years to finish her two degrees in English and Psychology. She plans on graduating in the spring of 2016.
“I was on the phone with my boyfriend and all of the sudden I was repeating words and I couldn’t form the next words; I thought I was having a stroke. He rushed over here and brought me to the [emergency room],” Gill said.
According to Gill, the emergency room diagnosed what she was experiencing as a panic attack, but she knew there was more to the story than that. Gill said she went to her doctor who referred her to a neurologist. From there, he recommended that she have an MRI. From there, they were able to see it was not a panic attack; it was in fact a tumor. She was then recommended to Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center to see a neurosurgeon for follow-up exams.
“At this point we do not know if [the tumor] is actually [cancerous] or if it is benign. [My doctor] is optimistic that it is a benign tumor, unfortunately though I have had another recent MRI and the tumor is still growing at this point in time,” Gill said.
According to Gill, because the tumor is growing she needs to have it removed. If she hadn’t already scheduled a surgery for October, doctors said she would have been in surgery by August of 2015.
“My first reaction was I was surprised, but I wasn’t surprised. My mom is also diagnosed with two benign tumors. Luckily, she does not need to have her’s operated on because they haven’t grown in quite some time,” Gill said.
Gill said when she got the news she was in denial.
She couldn’t imagine something like this happening to her. She called her mom and it wasn’t until then when the both of them started to cry.
“At that point I was only twenty-one years old [when I was diagnosed]. I am now twenty-two years, but it’s not something you think of. You hear about children having cancer, you hear about older people having cancer, but you don’t really hear of that many people our age being diagnosed with tumors or cancer,” Gill said.
Gill said that because of her financial state, she and her family were struggling to stay afloat.
Raven Gill, KSC alumni and twin sister to Mylynda Gill, started a “Gofundme” account in order to help her sister raise money for her surgery. In addition to raising money, she created a Facebook page dedicated to spreading awareness in the community about her sister’s tumor.
Mylynda Gill said she used to work four part-time jobs in order to pay all of her bills. Now that she can’t work as much she has had to cut back to 10 to 15 hour work weeks instead of her usual 30 to 40 hour work weeks.
Mylynda Gill said it would be even worse financially after the surgery since she won’t be allowed to work at all.
“I just wanted to make sure that not only are my bills going to be taken care of, but I still live with my mom and my younger sister and I just want to make sure they are financially stable as well. I don’t want to be the cause for us to get evicted or to not have food on the table,” Mylynda Gill said.
Mylynda Gill said she hates asking people for help and she especially hates asking people for money. She said
Raven Gill / contributed photo
she realizes there are people in the world who have it worse off than her; however, now she realizes that she is no longer financially capable of not asking for money.
“It was getting to a point where we didn’t have heat for a month and my landlord was refusing to fix it. My mom was getting over a thousand dollars in electricity bills and we can barely get food on the table,” Mylynda Gill said. According to Raven Gill, she wanted to help her family and Mylynda out as much as possible.
“The main reason I wanted to do it was to give her some emotional support in the beginning. Also, I wanted to fundraise money mainly because we come from a single mom family and finances are extremely tight and unfortunately our health insurance isn’t always the best. Our parents went through a pretty bad divorce and the best way our dad gets back at our mom is by not paying our health insurance. It comes and it goes and when they try to cover something like a brain surgery, we need extra funds, especially because she’s not going to be working and the bills still have to get paid,” Raven Gill said.
Raven Gill continued, “The main reason why I started the Facebook page was just so that she could have support from the community. I just wanted her to feel like there are people there who care and who support her. We’ve always had each other, but I also wanted other people to understand at KSC to truly appreciate what they have because things could be a lot more difficult.”
In addition to the support from her sister, her boyfriend Kalidor Meader, is also a huge help to Mylynda Gill.
“For the most part [I try to] just be there. Try to be like emotional support and physical support when she needs it. We try to go out and [do] fun things. I try to keep her happy or her mind aloof, off of the subject. We take dance classes, when we can afford it. She says it keeps her happy so I try to do it as often as possible,” Meader said.
Mylynda Gill said she was reluctant at first to tell people before she had all the information. “A lot of people have been supportive and reached out. So far I have not [received] any negative feedback about it. It’s important for me though, to get the word out to students that things can happen and they shouldn’t take life for granted,” Mylynda Gill said.
Raven Gill said she tries her best to help her sister out in times of need. “I call her everyday to check up on her. I have also been doing my best to send money home that way she doesn’t have to work as hard,” Raven Gill said.
Raven Gill said she wants to be there for her sister, but it’s hard because she lives so far away. Luckily, she said she will be there for the surgery. However, she will have to leave the week after. “Not being there for her when she’s having a bad day is a little difficult, but that’s where Skype comes in handy,” Raven Gill said.
According to Mylynda Gill, it’s a struggle for the whole family living with this brain tumor. As supportive as everyone is, the tumor still has a huge impact on their daily lives.
Mylynda Gill said, “Struggling to get through this past semester was really hard for me.”
Raven Gill said she is personally affected by her sister’s brain tumor. “Being her twin sister I most likely need to get checked myself and I haven’t done so yet. She is literally the other half of my soul and being my twin sister and it’s very scary that this is happening to her because I can’t imagine a world without her. The risks are scary, too. The procedure is very safe, but still it’s a very scary situation. I’m always thinking about her. I always wonder if she’s having a good day or a bad day, I always wonder what she’s thinking about. I always worry about her and make sure she is doing what she needs to do,” Raven Gill said.
Raven Gill said she wanted the people at KSC to know the struggles her sister has and how despite those troubles, she pushes through everyday and fights her hardest.
“I know that finals are coming up and I know that’s difficult, but there’s someone on campus who has a brain tumor and she’s still trying to do her finals and she is still working part-time so she can still get the same college education as everyone else. I just want people to appreciate life for what it is. Even though everyone is in college and it’s supposed to be the best time of our lives, things happen and it’s happening to someone in the community,” Raven Gill said.
According to Mylynda Gill’s brain surgery prep & recovery Facebook page, she has touched the lives of so many people in the Keene community.
“It’s surprising because I think I generally am I loner. I only have a few close friends and I have my family, which has always been a strong unit for me, but it’s not until I’ve been getting all this feedback of people reaching out to me saying ‘look let me know if I can do anything’ that I realized how many people I’ve actually touched,” Mylynda Gill said.
Mylynda Gill continued, “Everyone’s been really supportive and I’ve tried to do a lot for my community ever since I was little, whether it was community service or volunteering here on campus. Sometimes you don’t realize how many people you touch or know until something like this happens and that your life does make an impact and it does make a difference in other people’s lives.”
Mylynda Gill said she is thankful for all the support she receives and glad to be an inspiration for others. Her inspiration is what helped her through this journey. “My inspiration really has just been coming from the support from my family and probably also my grandmother. She passed away from leukemia. Unfortunately, I was really young [when it happened] so I don’t have that many memories of her, but I know she was a really strong person. [I] try to remind myself that she fought until the end and I need to fight until the end, too. [I] need to keep living my life as though it is not affecting me, but being realistic of what I can do at the same time,” Mylynda Gill said. Mylynda Gill’s mom, Jennifer Berg, worries about her daughter all the time, but knows she is a brave young woman.
“For the time being all I can do is comfort her. I try to be her cheerleader and have a lighthearted, humorous attitude with it,” Berg said. Berg is very optimistic that her daughter will do well with the surgery. She said that you have to make the best of a bad situation and count your blessings.
“You’ve got to laugh or you’ll cry and we would much rather laugh and support each other through this,” Berg said.
Mylynda Gill is trying to share her story with as many people in the community as she can. She said if she could talk to someone else in her position she would tell them to appreciate their life and take nothing for granted.
“You have to address it, you have to realize your limits and you need to not push your limits. In this case, when you’re not one-hundred percent healthy, you could end up causing more serious damage [for]good so it’s hard. It’s understandable, just keep doing as much as you can keep doing, but know your limits and know it is okay to say ‘okay I can’t come in today’ or ‘I have a migraine. I need to stay in bed today.’ And that is okay, people will understand. It’s your life, you need to make sure that you are able to keep living it for several years to come,” Mylynda Gill said.
Mylynda Gill said this whole experience has been really eye opening for her. She said being so young when she was diagnosed was one of the worst parts.
“Not knowing if it’s cancer, if it’s benign, what’s going to happen, how am I going to recover, am I going to able to recover, am I going to come out of the surgery okay – there are risks involved with any surgery, especially brain surgery, so just ‘am I going to wake up afterwards?’ is one of the big questions for me,” Mylynda Gill said.
Mylynda Gill said she wants people not to regret their lives. She said she wants people to wake up everyday excited for the next.
“We may be young still, but you want to live each day like it is your last. It’s the truth. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll wake up, not feel well and go to the doctors and think it’s nothing and find out it’s worse,” Mylynda Gill said.
Mylynda Gill continued, “for me, it’s just trying to keep living my life and trying to keep finding ways to live and deal with the stresses that not only this impacts on me but as well as the other stresses in life, like my lease that will be ending in September.”
Mylynda Gill said she hopes she is well enough after her surgery so she can find work in order to afford housing. She said she fears having to live on the streets if she cannot financially support herself.
“If I had to say anything to anyone it would be just don’t take your life for granted, don’t make decisions that you’ll regret, but also live your life where you have a plan set for tomorrow in case you do get to wake up. It’s good to plan for your future, but it’s also good to make sure you have a past that you are proud of. You want to wake up saying ‘yesterday was a great day. Let’s make today even better‘,” Mylynda Gill said.
If her surgery goes well, Mylynda Gill says she plans to intern at Dartmouth College next spring semester working with their archives. She said she eventually plans on attending graduate school after that.
“Those are my optimistic plans if everything goes well, but I also have to be realistic about the situation. If the tumor does end up to be cancer then I probably will be going through more treatments and I will have to go from there to determine if I will be back in school the next fall or not. I’m trying to remain optimistic, Netflix for a month or two and then back on my feet and hopefully working three or four jobs again and what not,” Mylynda Gill said.
Tara Levy can be conatacted at tlevy@kscequinox.com