Advanced Essay #1: Andrew Rodebaugh

Introduction:

For my paper I was talking about a scary situation that I was going through this year. I was trying to communicate the fear that me and my family had when dealing with this situation. I hope I was a little funny also in my essay. I think I could have improved on describing a little more like Harlem and Boubou did in their essays.

Essay:

My life is pretty normal… well compared to most people like me. See I have a heart condition a super rare and dangerous one (not to brag). It is kind of complicated to explain but in basic terms, my heart does not include a left ventricle. As you may assume that’s not very good, to say the least. The doctors had to make my right ventricle of my heart to do the jobs of my lazy, non-existent left ventricle which takes more energy and in turn has its own set of problems. Sure I cannot walk up the stairs without wearing out (stairs are tough... don’t judge) and thank God I hate sports because that just does not work out well with me and my heart. But I am rarely unable to do what I want to do which makes me feel really lucky.

   It was not until very recently that I had a problem that was long term that I had to worry about a health problem. See what happened was that I was at my Church’s Bible Study™ with my older brother Will and we were talking and having a lovely time until suddenly my left foot started to shake uncontrollably… up and down… up and down. I had no clue what was going on… my first thought was that either I did not hydrate well enough which was the cause of 99.9% of my issues so I politely asked my brother if he could grab me some water and to text my Mom that this was happening. I tried to do this trying not to cause a big deal out of it. They knew me all my life and they have seen/helped me through this situation so I probably should have informed them that this was happening but of course I would have never guessed how long term this would be. Well, my Dad came to pick me up and he noticed that my leg was shaking so he called Mom to see what we should do. We ended up going home which did not last long so I went to the Emergency Room at around 11 pm (I know thrilling) and stayed at the hospital overnight. That night answered nothing… very encouraging to me.

   The shaking happened almost once a month and before it happens I would get super angry and I would not be myself. I would have a low tolerance for even the smallest things, yelling and stomping. And talk a little too much being honest to people about the things that I was annoyed about relating to them or that moment, in turn, making them really upset with me. And sometimes I would just shut down not being able to respond to other people. I was sent to the ambulance for the first time ever with my blood sugar very low which was the first of many false triggers to what supposedly caused these incidents which were annoying going from specialist to specialist not really listening to me. My fear got even greater about what was going on.

Fear is a weird thing it can keep us alert or shut us down. Make us appreciate things more or make us angry. It can make us faster or slow us down. Fear can be made up or be real. Fear can be exaggerated or not exaggerated enough. It depends on who you are and what is going on. I had a lot of scary situations in my life for me and my parents which they had helped me in life learning more about myself but hurt me at least temporary. This situation was it was a scary situation that I did not know what would happen to me and how serious it would it be.

Now the shaking has died down and I am not as scared as I was before. I stopped being constantly angry at people because I know that they are just trying to help me through life with these situations going on. They still have not figured out why the problems were occurring and may never know. But I feel safe now knowing that people around me will do anything to help me.