Ciera+G’s+Final+AmEx+2014+Speech

=Title of Speech=

"An Unhealthy World" by Ciera

=Text of Speech=

Each year, 7.6 million people die from cancer and those numbers are expected to increase 80% by the year 2030. 7.1 million U.S. children have asthma. 83,494 annual deaths are due to Alzheimer’s Disease. 26.5 million adults have heart disease in the United States. How many of you have a family member with cancer? Okay. How many of you at least know someone with cancer? I look around in this world, see sickness. I see despair. I see children born unhealthy. I see hospitals flooded with patients. I see not only the elderly sick but the too young as well. I see ones who are sick before their time. I see incurable diseases and people left with a shattered hope for their future. I see families suffering to support the medical bills. I see families torn apart from losing a loved one.

Some of you may not know but I have cared for sick family members my whole life. I was basically born into it. When i was born, my sister was already sick and my family had established a routine to take care of her. I basically was born into the cycle of taking of her and learned the duties growing up. I knew what medications she needed daily. I knew what type of activities she should and shouldn’t be doing. I knew what types of foods her body would agree with and the ones that would not. I knew when she was having a good day and would be up for doing something adventurous. And I knew when she was having a bad day, a day where she layed in bed, watched TV all day and missed more and more school credits for the year. I guess I thought that because I took care of my sister practically since I was a toddler, that I would go into the medical field to find a cure for the disease she had. I wanted to help other kids like her and quite frankly, my dream was to save her life. But once she passed away and I realized that i couldn’t save her and that my chances of saving others in her same situation was slim, I changed the way I viewed the world. I guess I thought that my sister’s death would be one of my last experiences dealing with something so traumatic, but I was wrong.

Over the past few years, I have changed my role in what I would like to be in the medical field someday. I now want to be a nurse practitioner in the NICU. For those of you who do not know what that is, a nurse practitioner is an advanced RN who  manages acute and chronic medical conditions. They are qualified to diagnose medical problems, order treatments, prescribe medications, and make referrals. And in the NICU meaning the neonatal intensive care unit which specializes in the care of ill or premature newborn infants. I have decided that working in a lab to find a cure to a disease may not be my cup of tea, that I would feel more successful in saving babies who are born sick. I believe that the children are the future and should be taken care of for possibility to create generations to come.

Now that I have cared for a sick loved one, and been through that situation, I thought my duty was done. But the young aren’t the only ones who get sick. I am now caring for my grandparents full time. For as long as I can remember, my grandparents have been completely healthy. Since both of my parents work, they took care of me every single day. They would pick me up from school, help me with my homework, make me an after school snack, and then take me to gymnastics practice. They enjoyed taking care of me while my parents couldnt during the day. Besides these daily luxuries, they have always supported my school functions and taken me on multiple vacations over the summers. For as long as I can remember, my grandparents have been the happiest, healthiest, and most active people I know. Over the last five years, things have really started to change for them. First, my grandma was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy. After that, my grandmother got the news that she has a blood disease called MDS, to put it into simple terms, her red blood cell count is too low. Every two weeks, she has to get a blood transfusion at the hospital which takes about six hours. On top of that, she was diagnosed with preleukemia in response to the MDS blood disease. I guess it would be okay if I only had one sick grandparent to care for, but that is not the case. My grandpa is also sick. He’s a different type of sick though, not really the kind that they can diagnose or give medication to cure. See about a year ago he had double pneumonia which put him into the hospital. It ended up getting so bad that they had to do a tracheostomy, allowing a machine to breathe for him for 90 days. Since they have taken all of the tubes out, he still has not completely recovered. While he was in the hospital they had to put him on a feeding tube, leaving a hole in stomach which he calls his second belly button. He spent the next few months aching and on oxygen one hundred percent of the time. He has lost about one hundred pounds since he has gotten out of the hospital and has still not completely recovered. Because he is a retired fireman and had such a bad case of pneumonia, his lungs started sticking to the chest wall. A little over a month ago, he had a lung transplant at UCLA. He is home now and getting stronger slowly but surely. He has to take over twenty antirejection medications daily, he cannot eat certain foods, he is not supposed to be exposed to sun for too long, he cannot drive for three months, and he really has to watch his weight. He is now 6 foot one and 140 pounds. My dad, his fiance, and I are the only ones in the family who care for them. My family’s role is typically to make a few trips to Walgreens to pick up prescriptions for them, or take them to a doctors appointment during the week. We even do the simple things, like picking up dinners for them and taking out their trash and do their weekly grocery shopping since neither of them are supposed to drive.

So what am I left with? A sister who passed away when I was eleven due to a chronic illness called cystic fibrosis. She was unfortunately born with it and stayed sick until the end. Then I have two grandparents who were healthy all throughout my childhood until about five years ago when certain complications kicked in from wear and tear on the body, and now care for them on a daily basis.

In the America I come of age in, I wish to see children born healthy. I wish to see mothers able to take home their newborn baby a few days after delivery. I wish to see women who do not have to be tested when they get pregnant to see what type of disease their child might carry. I wish to see grandparents who have worked hard to achieve a retired life, to actually be able to enjoy it. In the American that I grow up in, I wish to see families whole again, knowing that their loved ones are healthy and have an opportunity to live a fulfilling life. I wish to see children enjoying their childhood, not having to take care of a sick sister and sick grandparents so young. In the America that I come of age in, I wish to see a healthier and happier society.

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