Cameron's Perspective of the loopy journey...

Hi Friends!

Cam wrote this essay for his English class. I thought he could do my blog today since he expressed his feelings so well.

Love,
Shel

Cameron Bland, 10/12/10

In this statement, I will be telling you about a life-changing experience. What happened to my family and me was traumatic. In many cases, the family might have split up and turned against each other. Instead our family learned to pull together, and I came out of the experience a better person. About three years ago, my Mom got very sick. She developed lupus, which is a disease in which your white-blood cells attack your vital organs such as your heart, your brain, your lungs, and your kidneys instead of protecting your body, as they should.

Before this happened, my Mom was a stay-at-home Mom. She was very energetic and would practically do all the household chores for us. After she got sick, she was in and out of the hospital all the time. When she was home, she was in bed most of the time. I have a large family. Besides my Mom and Dad, there are four children in our family. I have one younger sister named Molly who was eleven years old at the time. I have two younger brothers. When my Mom got sick, Nathaniel was nine years old and Isaac was five years old. I was fourteen years old when it happened and just starting high school.

Before this happened, I always thought this could happen to someone else but not to me. Then before I knew what was happening, my whole life changed. Instead of my Mom taking care of me, I began to help take care of her. Sometimes I had to stay home from school to watch my little brothers when she had a doctor’s appointment or was very sick from her chemotherapy. My Dad has to travel for work at times, and when he did I took on a lot of responsibility.

My Mom was going through chemotherapy. I had to be very careful because if I got even remotely sick, she could get deathly sick. She had no immune system to protect her body against even a common cold. We learned to wash our hands and sanitize the house against germs. This helped, but she still caught infections sometimes. I felt stressed out and very sad when she kept going to the hospital.

We were short on money sometimes, because of all the hospital stays and medications. I couldn’t afford the latest I-pods, cell phones, and video games that other teenagers had. Some bullies even made fun of me for this. My parents weren’t able to pay me allowance anymore even though I now did a lot of household chores. I learned to make do with less.

Many people were exceptionally kind to me during this time. My teachers understood why I had to miss school and supported me during this time. I have a family friend named Annie who helped a lot. She is sort of like an aunt to me. She kept things positive with her cheerful personality. No matter how stressful things were, I knew that when Annie came things would be fun. She came and helped a lot. She often came “bearing gifts” and stayed for a week or two.

It’s been 3 years now, and my Mom is doing much better. I am proud of how I handled this experience, and I think it taught me valuable life lessons. First of all, life isn’t fair. If it were, my Mom wouldn’t be sick. I also learned that the illness of one person in a family affects everyone. At fourteen, I had to grow up fast and my younger siblings had to grow up faster. I now have the ability to supervise others and mediate conflicts, thanks to my arguing brothers. I learned quickly how to prevent the spread of illness by taking care of myself. I learned how to keep calm even when stressed. I learned to be content with what I had rather than always wanting more. I never knew how nice other people could be, and it inspires me to be that nice. In conclusion, my Mom’s illness taught me important life skills that will help me to succeed in college and beyond.


***And I'll say it again, I have the best kids in the world:-)