TWINSBURG, Ohio — In the Allen home, it's all about family. Bella, 16, Nathan, 13, and parents Louise and Darrell.
Bella is used to the team mentality. She's been a competitive gymnast since she was a little girl. Then in 2017, at just nine years old, life for Bella took a drastic turn.
First, she noticed a strange sensation in her foot.
"We were walking to a RubberDucks game and I remember my foot would kind of numb," Bella said.
A short while later while in class, she experienced a lifechanging event.
"I'm screaming, 'help help!' I'm feeling this start to come up and overtake my body and I don't know what's going on. And I like fall onto the kid next to me," Bella said while describing her first seizure.
The event led to her diagnosis of epilepsy. It was devastating for her parents, but they leaned in because they're a team.
"One of her physicians said epilepsy is not an individual disease. It's a family disease. And it's true because she would scream whenever she would start to have a seizure and it would ... my heart would stop," Louise said.
Yet, even dealing with seizures that would sometimes last all day, Bella still battled through.
"So I've had a couple instances where I'd have one at practice," Bella said. "I would go over and tell my coach I did not feel well. I did not feel right."
Her dad was impressed with how much she persevered.
"She would take one day off. And then we would encourage her to get back to her normal activities like that following day or as soon as she could," Darrell said.
In May of 2022, a breakthrough happened. After extensive imaging, doctors at Cleveland Clinic decided that Bella was a good candidate for stereotactic robotic assisted laser ablation.
In other words, a less invasive surgery that could potentially take her seizures away for good.
Though still dealing with some weakness in her leg, Bella got back to the mat just one month after surgery. She's been seizure-free ever since.
"There's always still the what ifs and I feel like as time goes on, you start to trust it more and more," Bella said.
This Walsh Jesuit junior is practicing hard to get back to competition. And no one is prouder than her family.
"When I think of resilience, I see her picture in the dictionary, right? I mean, seriously, she has been so strong through all of this," Louise said through tears.
For those with their own struggles, Bella has a message:
"I don't want this to define me as a person. And I feel like that's just such an important thing is to like, don't let it define you. Just keep doing what you wanna do."
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