2 years ago, migraines and a tumor hospitalized Bluffton teen. Now, he’s graduating
Jason Garcia has had about two months of normalcy in the last two years.
In July 2019, he saw a doctor for what he thought was a migraine after years of headaches and nausea that would begin the moment he woke up.
What the doctor found was a large tumor in the back of his head, where his spinal cord and brain met. The tumor, called ependymoma, could have been growing there since he was a small child.
Garcia underwent a 10-hour surgery at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston to remove the tumor that left him with light sensitivity and an unsteady gait.
When he began his junior year at May River High School that August, he was homebound — a teacher came to his home to help him with virtual classes while he recovered from his surgery.
She offered to help him start taking welding classes at May River with teacher Bradley Childress the next semester when he returned to in-person classes.
Garcia took her up on it, returning to in-person classes and beginning the welding program in January 2020. Two months later, he went back to virtual classes, this time with the district’s full 21,000-plus student population joining him because of COVID-19.
“I was like ‘Wow, come on! I just got back,’” he said Monday. “And I have to do welding online?”
Despite those setbacks, Garcia is graduating from May River on Tuesday on time and with a welding certificate after completing four levels of required classes.
He’s recovered from the surgery to remove his tumor; his light sensitivity stopped about a month after the operation, and his walking returned to normal shortly after. Now, he just has to get an MRI scan every three months, he said.
And he attended his first ever prom last month, accompanying girlfriend Erica Hayes and hanging out with friends. He said it’s one of his favorite memories of high school.
Despite a few months of learning welding online — a process that apparently focuses on verbal descriptions of hands-on tasks and vocabulary review — he’s learned that he enjoys the trade, especially after returning to in-person classes when the district started them back up.
“At first, I really sucked,” he said. “I just got better. And I really like it. Even on the first day, when I sucked, I really liked it. I like making the welds really pretty and all that.”
In April, Garcia participated in the annual Arclabs Welding School Competition, competing against fellow May River students and Battery Creek High School.
He was one of the top two students in the competition, netting an $11,500 scholarship to attend the Charleston trade school.
Originally, Garcia planned on heading straight into the workforce after graduation. But after talking to Childress, he thinks he might put that scholarship to use.
“I was thinking of just working right out of high school instead of going to trade school, but now I’m kind of thinking maybe I could go to trade school in Charleston,” he said.
This story was originally published June 14, 2021 at 3:18 PM.