- Joined
- Oct 10, 2008
- Messages
- 1,715
- Trophies
- 0
- Location
- Gallifrey
- Website
- steamcommunity.com
- XP
- 459
- Country
[P= ]Patrick Campbell was 14 when the stroke came. He was in gym at school, felt a pain in his head, and went to his locker. He thought it was strange that he couldn't recall the combination. A girl came by and asked if he was okay. That's all he remembers.
When he came to in the hospital, he'd lost the use of the entire right side of his body.
Today, he's 21, a student in San Francisco. Through hard training and the support of his family, he's learned how to walk, albeit slightly slower than an able-bodied person of his age. He says he has a speech impediment, but it's barely noticeable. However, he has never regained the use of his right hand, and likely never will.
As a 14-year-old Campbell loved two things - drawing and gaming. He is naturally right-handed. The stroke robbed him of both these passions.
"When I came out of the hospital I went to a friend's house and he was playing Super Smash Bros., which was a game that I had loved to play. I just couldn't play without my right hand. I thought that it was over for me as a gamer."
But that sense of defeat didn't last long. He started to draw pictures with his left hand, and began to regain his previous skills, as well as a new artistic direction born of his experience. He picked up game controllers and experimented, ramming the controller on his leg and using every finger available to master the buttons.
Today, he plays games well. He's no pro-gamer, but in an online head-to-head game, you'd better be good if you want to own him. "I play online a lot. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose. But if I'm playing, say, a driving game of eight players, I'll always come first, second or third."
There are no genres closed off to him, although he prefers action games, fighters, drivers and shooters. The only trouble he gets are from games that make use of the d-pad and shoulder buttons at the same time, but he's figured out a way to deal with this, shaping his hand around the problem.
"Friends play me and seeing that I use one hand, figure they'll win. But I usually kick ass," he says.
Campbell is studying illustration. He wants to work in the games industry and practices his art by drawing the people he knows and by creating monsters, minions and anti-heroes.
His favorite character is called Xepher, a warrior with robotic arms. "I'd like to be more like him" he says. "Having robotic arms would be great, but more than that, he just doesn't care what people think about him. People look at me because they see I'm different and I get tired of that. But I can't just stop caring, otherwise I wouldn't have achieved the things that I have."[/P]
I think it's great to see that even after his stroke he still did what he loved to do, good on him!
