Category: Physical Scar

In this post we’ll share the story of Oreste Perez. I was fortunate enough to meet him and notice his enhancement. This site has made it easier to broach certain subjects that may be awkward for other people. I’m fascinated with the stories of how people with heavy or interesting scars and how they got them.

I’m grateful every day for that curiosity and the chance to hear and share stories like these. I have to admit that I always imagine how these scars may have happened, and ‘I’m almost never right. This particular story really got me emotionally because whenever it’s a childhood injury I have a tendency to want to reach out through time and shield that child. The 2 major problems with that are: I can’t. And the other is, if I save them, they don’t get to grow up into the people I get to speak to now. Oreste is a really impressive young man, so I wouldn’t dare change a thing about him. This is his story in his words.

“It was supposed to be a family trip to the beach, but that’s not how it ended. This is my story through my eye’s point of view. It was a morning on a weekend, and my parents and older sister went on a family road trip to the beach. I was born in Holguín, Cuba. The nearest beach was a good 45 min drive, but expect longer as our car was an old 1955 Dodge Coronet. As much as my dad loved that car, it was always my mom driving. As my mom was cruising down the highway, an unfortunate event occurred. My mom’s blood pressure dropped, and she passed out while driving.

I was sitting in the front seat on my dad’s lap with no seat belt and my sister in the back. Before anyone could react, we crashed into a light post, and the windshield shattered into a million pieces. After that, I don’t remember what happened. There was no ambulance to call or help as Cuba has very limited resources. By a miracle, a semi-truck driver pulled over and took my family to the hospital. The damages were severe as I suffered glass going into my eye, cuts on my lid, and a deep cut on my cheek. My mom broke her nose, and my dad and sister didn’t have any injuries. Back to the problem of lack of resources in Cuba, the first hospital had me waiting with glass in my eye. They were looking for a doctor that could operate on me. The hospital found out they did not have a microscope and settled for telescopic surgery to remove as much glass from my eye as possible. They closed all my cuts, and we saved me by a thread. Although I survived, I lost my left eye in the event. It was rough after the surgery as I was always in pain and light-sensitive. My eyes were fighting to maintain even pressure.

Fast forward a year later, my family received the opportunity to move to the United States. Upon arrival, I was given two more surgeries where doctors could remove even more glass fragments from my eye. Doctors claimed my eye’s vision was gone due to a fractured cornea, and I could not see the light from that eye. They gave me hope of a cornea transplant when I turned 16 as they needed my eye to be fully grown for a delicate surgery. After all, that was when I could start school, and a new challenge came as I had to grow up with one eye. These years I spent learning about myself as I’m not coordinated at all. One eye can definitely make you clumsy. Having one eye makes you have horrible depth perspectives. Despite my flaws and difficulties, I learned to bring some light to it.

Growing up and falling in love with comedy made me have a happier spirit toward it, as I’m well known for my one-eye jokes! This attitude helped me as I go through life being constantly asked about my eye, and I learned to love telling my story. It was hard to be bullied as I had already made the jokes before, plus most people think it’s awesome. After turning 16, I had an appointment to discuss the cornea transplant. After many tests on my eye, doctors sadly found my nervous system shut off on my eye, and the cornea transplant would be more of a risk than a chance to see again. This news was very tough on me because even though I did not hate my eye, I wanted to be normal. I almost fell out of love with my eye as I had to face the fact that I’m probably going to never see out of my left eye. Seeing all my friends and family show me support and love made me snap out of that as I learned life goes on. I made it my mission to fully embrace my life, and now I can’t imagine my life with two eyes. My eye has given me self-confidence and has shaped me into the man I am today. I’m grateful for my eye and everything it has taught me.”

Portraits by https://auroraphotographybysage.pixieset.com/

Oreste’s Album https://auroraphotographybysage.pixieset.com/oreste/

This one is very personal for me because I’ve known the author for coming up on 20 years. He’s been a long-time friend who has been through a lot. He’s a fellow Marine who has had more challenges than most handed to him, but he handles them all with exemplary optimism and courage. I hope that his story inspires you. There are several links at the end for the groups mentioned in his story along with ones to help if kindness strikes you. If we’re lucky it may even lead to finding him a donor. Here’s the story of my friend Terry Beale.

I go by many names, but I was born Terrence Christopher Beale into a Marine Corps family, and the youngest of six. Joining the Corps was kind of a rite of passage in the family. Oddly enough, I was the only one to go to war. I was with the second AA (Assault Amphibian) Battalion out of Courthouse Bay in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. We were shipped off to Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Being that I was a Lance Corporal, I got stuck with a lot of the shit details, including burning shit. I had to do some work in the burn pits too. I was also exposed to numerous airborne hazards. I’m sure it didn’t help that I was sent into enemy tanks and vehicles to scavenge some of their equipment. Vehicles that had been hit with sabot rounds and depleted uranium. I also dealt with a lot of inhalation of smoke from the oil fires. They even say that the water they provided us wasn’t all that good. I was just 18 years old and thought I was bulletproof. I didn’t think about any of that back then, just the mission. 

After coming back, and finishing out my enlistment, I distanced myself from the military, and anything related to the government entity. I never really felt healthy. I would get sick several times a year but avoided going to the doctors. After numerous bouts with kidney stones and other issues, I decided to go to the VA and get checked out in 2012. Thus began a grueling journey in healthcare. It was discovered that I had hyperparathyroidism, which required surgery to my neck. After eight separate surgeries, they were finally able to remove all four parathyroids but damaged my thyroid in the process and had to remove it. While that was going on, I continued to deal with kidney stones and a horrible pain that they could not pinpoint. It wasn’t until 2016 that they discovered I had severe interstitial cystitis, but by that time, it had progressed too far and my bladder shriveled up to the size of a walnut, no longer functioning so it had to be removed. My kidney function was severely decreased, and I had to get bilateral nephrostomy tubes hanging out of my back to drain my kidneys. Unable to deal with the craziness of my health, my wife left me to deal with all of this on my own. In 2019, I went into surgery to have my bladder removed, as well as scar tissue in my ureters. Unfortunately, the scar tissue was actually encapsulated pockets of pseudomonas aeruginosa which are bacteria that can cause infections of the blood, lungs, or other body parts after surgery, which most likely came from my time in the Persian Gulf. When they cut into the scar tissue, the bacteria splattered over everything and rendered my renal system useless. They injected dye into my right kidney and the veins started exploding, causing me to start to bleed out. After four transfusions, and still bleeding, the doc had to make the decision to take the kidney and ureters as well. Not exactly the news I wanted to wake up to, but those were the cards I was dealt. 

A year later, once the area had healed enough, the doctor went back in and took the other kidney as well as my appendix, and took 9 inches of my large intestine to create a Florida pouch, which is a neobladder, in hopes that I get a kidney transplant, and I will have a viable pathway for the kidney to drain. I had a fistula put in my left arm for dialysis, which I have been on for three years now. I just finished home hemodialysis training, and now do dialysis on myself, which has allowed me to take my life back. I do dialysis four days a week for four hours a day.

I have had surgery on both hands for carpal tunnel and trigger finger. I’ve also recently been brought into the burn pit clinic and found to have considerable decreasing pulmonary function. I have to use a nebulizer and have sleep apnea. I have multiple back injuries, for which I do various treatments for, including acupuncture. 

I do not let my illnesses keep me from living. I am a mentor for The Long Walk Home and an Irreverent Warrior, a family of veterans that gather together in numerous locations across the country on a monthly basis, and do what we call silkies hikes. We use humor and camaraderie to improve mental health and prevent veteran suicide. They have breathed life back into me and shown me that I am still alive and very capable. I just did 11.41 miles on the last hike I participated in.

What do these scars mean to me? They are a badge of courage. They are a symbol of my resilience. They are a reminder that I refused to surrender, I will never give up, and I’m a bad motherfucker. My life is not the same, but I like to think that I am an inspiration to others, a motivator, and an example of how to make some sweet lemonade from the lemons life can give you. Yes, my life is forever changed, but what I go through And the scars that I carry are just a small price to pay for freedom, and freedom definitely is not free.

My dream is to secure a nice size piece of property and create a safe haven for veterans to get hands-on therapy. In the form of gardening, woodworking, auto mechanics, animal care, an apiary, and culinary arts. I would like to have multiple Connex boxes converted into tiny homes on the property so that veterans could have a little therapy staycation. I want to continue to help with the mental health crisis our country has by sharing what I know has worked for me. I feel the reason why I didn’t bleed out on that table was to continue to help other veterans pull themselves out of dark places.

I continue to do dialysis and wait patiently in hopes that someday a living donor will extend my life long enough to achieve my goal and dream. Semper Fi.

https://thelongwalkhome.org/

https://irreverentwarriors.com/

https://www.gofundme.com/f/hgjj8-gulf-war-veteran-and-his-dog-need-some-help

https://www.dovetransplant.org/veterans/terrence-beale

Remember – it does not take a match to be a living donor. It takes compassion and commitment.

https://www.tgh.org/services/transplant/kidney-transplant/living-kidney-donor-program

https://www.tampabay.com/sports/outdoors/2022/02/22/gasparilla-5k-the-latest-of-many-challenges-for-gulf-war-veteran-terry-beale/

Update: He has recently completed a 14-mile hike and just wanted to share that with everyone.