Survival of The Determined

Table of Contents:
1) First day of school
2) Papi
3) childhood memories ronovated
4)The cuoius case of the panda
5) Vitamin A
6) the day the panda came home
7) boxes and bins
8) the incurable disease

 
First Day of School:

Firsts. First steps. First words. First day of school. I felt afraid and alone in the world, walking up those wide and steep steps that seemed to travel along forever. The entry way seemed as if it were going to swallow me up and not let me out. I walked into the mouth of education, leaving that familiar and comforting place,  my mom for the first time in my life. What would happen in that room with the colored square rug on the floor, the book lined shelves, the smell of Elmer’s glue and paint, the little kitchen in the back of the room and the coolest place of all, the top of a ladder that led to a loft full of toys? Who were the other kids in the room? Did they love Woody and Buzz as much as I did? Did they leave their Lego fantasies at home? Were they scared too?

My last day was over, however I had overcome my nervousness with excitement. I walked out, the first one out, and paused in the door way. I looked out at a sea of parents and cameras; bursts of light from every which way trying to capture this moment, the moment I became a student, memorialized on HP photo printer paper and .jpeg files forever. I felt like a move star, looking over my fans, with the paparazzi-parents digitally obsessed with marking every moment of our lives.

In the midst of all this excitement and rush, i saw my mom, with the camera in hand and taking as many pictures as possible to record my first day. Seeing her reassured me that i would not be in danger, but on the contrary, even safer than before.  

Papi:
Come on Cristian, hurry, there’s a neat little smell over by that tree.
PAPI! HOLD ON!
No, come on hurry! Oh great, you found something you liked, no your going to take ten minutes trying to decide if you should examine it more thoroughly.
Come Pops, come sniff over here.
Ughh what does he want now? Fine, since i am walking you, i guess we can go were you would like to go.
Why are you looking at me like that Pops? Is there something wrong?
OK, are you done? OK, great, lets go over here now.
These are normal, everyday walks with Papi, our sheltie. He is constantly looking at us with those expressions of confusion, where he dose not understand where we are going.
He can be funny also, the way he thinks he is leading the walk. He believes that he can control where we go, where in realty, we, the walkers do. He dose not understand where his power ends and where ours begin.

Childhood Memories Renovated:

We started to renovate the house, making it more modern and stylish. The old laminate kitchen was replaced with proud glossy granite. The old, dusty carpet was replaced with a cold, but modern bamboo installation.

The old kitchen pocket-door is now gone and in its place is a wide entrance way into the kitchen. Stuffed in the wall with the pocket door we found artifacts from our past when the contractor knocked it down: an old DS stylus, Yughio cards, a stencil and various pencils/pens. Like making a true archaeological discovery, we celebrated every find and oohed and ahhed at the memories they provoked. On the actual pocket-door was another memento of our younger childhood, like the early-humankind cave paintings of France, there was the pictorial evidence that two little boys had been there. Squiggly lines and happy faces drawn to pre-school perfection. Memories.


The Curious Case of The Panda:

“Hahahahahahahahahahahaha” Said the giraffe.
“Shhhhhh,” said a random stranger, “he’s sleeping.”
“Does it look like I care? Why should I be quiet just because he has some stupid problem?”, as the giraffe points a hoof at Aaron, my younger brother.
“She has a point, why should any of us care what happens to him?”, says another.
Whaaaat? Who…said……who said…..that? POUND POUND POUND. AHHHHHHHH! Aaron screamed for his head to stop pounding.
“Look, now he is awake. Just be quiet.”
AHHHHHHHHH MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT…stop…
“Hahahahahahah”, says the baby giraffe, “you will never make it out of this hospital. You’ll be stuck in here forever!”
but...~
“but nothing. the pain is just a sheer reminder of how humans can get.”
AHHHHHH MAKE THEM GO AWAY!...AWAY....away....tell them to leave me alone... and that is what we did, we told them, all the “people” and “giraffes” to go away and they did. All but one stayed. There...there is still one here...still one here... and Mom told him/her to shoosh and they left through the door.

Vitamin A
These hallucinations were the only two he ever had at his stay in the hospital. We told the “people” to go away and they did. Each hallucination walked out the door and each hallucination went away. The stuffed animal giraffes were covered by a blanket and then they stopped their talking.

Aaron has vitamin A poisoning. Only two percent of the whole world has this disease. The doctor told us that he may grow out of it when reaches the age of 30. Right now Aaron can still get severe headaches and dizziness. This can make it hard for him to stand up straight.

He suffers everyday from this autoimmune disease, but can hardly do anything about it. This is a constant struggle for Aaron to fight off the downside of taking his medicines; the uncontrollable tiredness and the inability to function correctly. Even though Aaron has this disease, he is able to enjoy life fully, which is summed up in this phrase, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade”.


The Day the Panda Came Home:

School was rough. It was hard for to concentrate in the middle of the school day. I found myself thinking about the last person that was there in Aaron’s hallucinations; the last being. Who was that? I did not know. What would they be like if they were real? Would they be friendly?
It was hard to focus and really put time into my schooling. My grades slipped twice, but I was able to bring them back up. I used to come home sad and depressed. I went to bed and starred at the empty bed next to me, cold and well kept. The house seemed to have lost energy to stand up correctly, and thus everything felt cramped.

Then, one day, he came home. He came home because the doctors said he did not need the vicadin anymore and that his vitamin A was at least 90, which was a big drop from the 120. I remember, going up stairs into our room to change, and instead of seeing an empty bed, I saw it filled, for the first time in 4 months. Filled with a broken boy. All his stuffed animals surrounded him and protected him, the way we did in the hospital.

I went over and I felt so happy to see him. The intravenous tubes he had going into him had disappeared; In the same way my sadness was now replaced with happiness.


Boxes and bins.

We were living in boxes and bins for all the months my brother was in the hospital and for the rest of my middle school experience. The one thing about this lifestyle is that it is so hard to get to things. You practically need everything from every bin, so you need to have every bin on top of every pile, but that does not work. So we prioritize what bins should be on top and which on bottom.

All the medical bins on top were prioritized first. Secondly we prioritized all the paper bins. These bins included bills and schedules for up coming events. After the bins containing important papers were prioritized, then came the bins and boxes that were full of blankets and old clothes. Last but not least, we had the book bins. These were at the bottom because they are the heaviest and are good bins for the base of the piles.

The lives of people are not meant to be living in boxes and bins. Lives of people are meant to be shared through an open world, where everything is out in the open and free. We are not meant to live enclosed. ...in boxes and bins.

The incurable disease.

Life is a cruel and unforgiving game that does not give you hints or pointers. When you go out into the wild and get bitten by an animal life can seem just terrible. When you play the game of life, the bites that you receive can cost more than stitches needed to repair the bite wounds.

It’s so unfair having to sacrifice. All the lights and sun were blotted out because Aaron could not be in the light. My mom, stayed with him the whole time. It was depressing in that room, like the depression followed us home from the hospital.

The last part of eighth grade was hell. God does things for reasons we cannot explain. I don’t understand and I wish I did. If I knew that, I could explain global warming, or why we still have not found a cure for cancer. I do not understand why people go starving every day and yet people can spend billions of dollars on birthday parties.

My mom is that last person that should get sick. Ever. She is a trooper among troopers.
My mom has an autoimmune disease.

She has Reynards, lupus, and vasculitis. I see her pain and her suffering. She struggles with everyday living, unable to correctly function. She knows that she cannot do things, yet she does them anyways. She cannot cook or clean or even take us to school in the mornings, yet she does all those things and more. I appreciate what she does for us. I have no words to describe what I feel.

However, she is able to produce unconditional love for us every day. My mom is the most sportively validating human being on the planet. She can look at you and by your expression, tell what is wrong. That’s real ESP. She is the real superwoman of today, helping people despite her own condition; fighting to help others when she can barley help her self.

I leave to you this thought of sadness and depression; of my mom so terribly sick. She could catch a cold and die, and my brother could have a seizure and go into a coma and die. We have been manipulated by life, and now it is our turn to manipulate life, and live our own happy life. We all have our stories to tell, and we all have our memories. We use these memories as tools to discover ourselves and to define ourselves as well. We use the past to shape our future and the hope for the future to shape our present.