By Casey Stribbell

Melody Kwok started grade 11 with great anticipation about what the school year would bring. She had her mind set on golfing and figure skating, two sports she loves and excels at.

Melody has been playing golf at TIS since grade 9 – the only girl on the team. She proved to have a lot of potential. “Mel has been the face of girl’s golf at TIS for the past 3 years and was our first female competitor in ACAMIS. She has mental toughness and the ability to compete without getting frustrated, which is a trait any good golfer should have,” said her golf coach, Dan d’Entremont.

Melody is also a skilled figure skater. She was planning to travel to Hong Kong with the Macau Skating team when her life took an unexpected turn of events. It was mid September, just after the first semester had started. Melody has having a typical day when she went to the rink for practice and then came home to shower. Later that night, she told her mom she was feeling sick and that her head hurt. Her mom drove her to the hospital where the doctors thought it was just a bad headache; but after two days and a brain scan, she was rushed in for surgery. It was a brain aneurism. A blood vessel had exploded in her brain.

“It was a tragic event, bad luck, but also, I was still in a way, lucky,” Melody admitted after reflecting on her three weeks in the hospital. “I got to see a girl my age who experienced an aneurism when she was eight, but it affected her in a much different way. Her aneurism happened in an area where it caused her to lose the ability to control her movements, so half of her body didn’t move.” Melody’s aneurism occurred in a different area of her brain, the results were not as traumatic and she was able to make a full recovery.

But the story doesn’t end there. Melody, though missing the entire golf season, was able to go back to living a normal life as a grade 11 student and figure skater. She began training, motivated to compete in Beijing later this year. However, her plans fell through when she landed hard on the ice.

“I broke my arm near the joint and ended up needing surgery. They had to put pins in my arm,” Melody said. Due to this type of surgery, she says her parents are concerned about her safety continuing as a competitive figure skater. “I’ll return to golf next year because it’s safe, but I don’t know about skating, maybe.”

Although Melody couldn’t compete in either sport this year, she still volunteered at the recent Special Olympics golf tournament where she helped with scoring. “They wanted people who had golfing experience, so I thought it was a good idea,” Melody said.

One would never know Melody faced such traumatic events this past year. She still comes to school like the rest of her classmates and talks about her tragedies with a smile. It’s amazing what she has had to overcome, and what she can still accomplish in the future.