Personal Narrative: Who I Am

Within my fifteen and a half years of living, I have experienced many heart wrenching moments that have changed who I am, so many that I stopped trying to keep count long ago. Like most teenagers, the past couple of years have been some of the most confusing, hectic years of my life. I'm at that age I'm trying to figure out who I am, as well as who I want to become. As indecisive as I am, I will more than likely change my mind a time or two, but right now at this very moment, I've finally come to terms with who I really am, and what I would like to do for the rest of my life.

November 4th, 2015 my family and I were in Valdosta when we received a call that broke my heart completely and left all of us speechless. My cousin Austin had been

life-flighted in critical condition to the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. He was working at Harveys when he got lightheaded and passed out. He had never had any type of health problems, so this was a shock to all of us. We quickly left Valdosta and headed straight to the hospital. Whenever we arrived, he was in the ER being operated on. His heart was only working 13% and he was only 13 minutes away from dying. During the operation, they inserted a VAD device, short for Ventricular assist device. A VAD is an electronic device that’s inserted to help a failing heart pump blood. He was the first person under 18 in Georgia to have ever received this device, so it was pretty risky. The device worked perfectly and kept him alive until he received a heart transplant on April 27th, 2015. Since then he has been fine and has no problem with his heart.

While we were at the hospital waiting for him to receive his heart transplant, we met a great number of children with severe health problems. I had a very close relationship with many of these children, and just being able to put a smile on these kid's faces was priceless. During this period of time, I became certain that I wanted to go into the medical field for children. I would never settle for a career I would not enjoy, and I would most definitely become very passionate about this career.

This heartbreaking period of time has made me a much stronger person and really showed me who I really am, as well as what I want to pursue a career in. Before this I had to clue to what I wanted to do. I'm so thankful to have had the opportunity to meet those children. Their families continuously thanked me, but in reality, the children were the ones to be thanked. They helped me more than I could have ever helped them.