Model and influencer Victoria Vesce was a small town girl with big dreams. In her early 20s, as a professional NBA dancer, she was on her way to the top. When two near-fatal brain tumors nearly sidelined her for good, she fought through and on to achieve a lifelong dream of gracing the pages of Sports Illustrated.
It all started on a buffalo farm in “the middle of nowhere North Carolina,” shares Vesce. “I was a jock. I never wore makeup. I had puffy hair and braces and I was awkward. I was very interested in sports and academics, and not socializing,” she explains. “But I had really big dreams and knew that small town life wasn’t for me.”
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The 29-year-old says that as a child she was bullied and teased for her looks and her awkwardness and eventually her modeling aspirations. But Vesce says everything changed when she turned 18.
“My mom really encouraged me because she always took my picture and saw that I lit up in front of the camera,” she says. “I saw that it was a competition and I decided to enter. I never even wore make-up or wore heels, but I got to be blessed and then I was discovered.”
Vesce started modeling and never looked back. At age 23, she was “living her best life” after college as a cheerleader for the Charlotte Hornets. She applied to law schools to fulfill another dream of becoming a lawyer.
Suddenly, Vesce says she began experiencing strange symptoms — many of which she attributed to her hard-partying lifestyle. “I got a migraine but I thought I was just hungover,” says Vesce.
But as the months rolled on, these symptoms became harder to ignore. “The migraines would get so bad I’d throw up. I’d start getting ringing in my right ear and lose my hearing. I’d get adrenaline rushes where my heart was beating really fast, and then I’d crash. I had to take naps all the time. I had to to sit out practice. I knew something was seriously wrong.”
Several trips to the doctor over the course of a year yielded few answers. “They saw that I was active and healthy, literally in the best shape of my life, and they told me ‘oh, you’re fine!'” says Vesce. “It was frustrating.”
After being treated repeatedly for an ear infection, it was a trip to New York in 2017 to model in Mercedes Benz Fashion Week that finally made her take her career seriously. “I had lost sensation in the right side of my face, I had difficulty hearing and I couldn’t stop vomiting. It would have gotten really bad.”
Soon, Vesce received the news no one ever wants to hear: she had a brain tumor. While an official diagnosis of multiple paraganglioma was a relief because it validated what had happened to her, Vesce was left devastated.
“I couldn’t believe it because everything was going so well. I had just come back from the Olympics with an NBA team and I was applying to law schools. Now I was devastated. I had to quit the dance team and I thought I was going to die. “
This news sent Vesce into a depression and what she calls a “very dark period” in her life. “That’s when I really found out who my friends were. All of a sudden I went from being on top, to a downward slope, and the haters really came out,” she says.
But it was a positive attitude and focus on mental health that got her through. “Sometimes you just have to look at the big picture and keep trucking,” she says with a laugh.
“I went from this glamorous, fit girl, hair extensions and everything, life in front of a camera, to not being able to bathe or feed myself or wash my hair. My life was turned upside down. It was humbling,” she says.
After surgery to remove two brain tumors, 31 grueling rounds of radiation and an experimental treatment at Duke University, Vesce is healthy again and continues to check things off her bucket list. One of those items…was becoming one Sports Illustrated model.
In 2021, after moving to Miami, Vesce became a finalist for newspaper’s model search, and things looked up again. She also fulfilled her dream of a law degree, after working part-time while undergoing treatment. Unfortunately, that same year, Vesce lost the woman who had been “her rock” all along: her mother, Denise.
While she deals with some residual effects from her condition, including permanent hearing loss in her right ear, Vesce says she is grateful for this second chance at life. “I used to keep my Instagram page to just professional model photos and curated images, now I show people the real, authentic me and my story touches people.”
This includes sharing a photo of himself in a hospital bed, post-surgery.
These days, Vesce is active in the National Brain Tumor Society and advocates for others with her condition. She also speaks about grief and mental health after the loss of a parent, and volunteered with relief efforts when Hurricane Ian devastated southwest Florida. Vesce was honored in July during Miami Swim Week at the 5th Annual Wonder Woman Initiative.
The single Floridian also launched a podcast called Validated! by Victoria, where she discusses the dangers of dating and maintaining friendships as an adult. “The haters really came out of the woodwork this past year,” she says, including some Vesce thought were her friends. “Ending friendships now is harder than ending a relationship,” she says. “But through all the heartbreak and rejection, I’ve stayed consistent with my goals.”
The key is also not to let people walk all over you. “I can go from doormat to aggressive Italian superfast,” jokes Vesce. “It’s really about finding that middle ground and obviously not being a doormat in any relationship in your life,” she advises. One of these goals is to inspire others. – The most important thing is to just keep going. You never know who you will inspire.”
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