Richard Hampton
English 950 Sec. 59
Professor Givhan
Summer 2013 When I was in my late twenties, I thought to myself it was time to grow up and have a family. I had been dating for about 4 years, so my wife and I decided to get married and start a family. I worked more than full time at my job at the time and I thought by working so much that it would get in the way of having a family. I realized that I needed to slow down a bit and everything fell into place. Unfortunately, when we finally found out we were pregnant with our first son we also found out that I now have bladder cancer. By the time we found out about the cancer it had been in my system for over a year. I was rushed to the hospital with a fever of 105 degrees, and straight into surgery. I was told that I had cheated death by a matter of hours, but by the grace of God it just wasn’t my time. We had been married now for a couple of years when we decided to add to our little family. That’s when we got another challenge handed to us. More cancer, and this time it was in my right kidney. I couldn’t believe how things could go from so good to being very serious in a heartbeat. My time still hadn’t come, and I certainly wasn’t going to back down. I knew that my life had much more positives than negatives in store for me. My wife has always been my strength in whatever we needed, and this time wasn’t any different. Along with her going through school, and holding down a fulltime career, she held us all together with her loving bond. She has known that for years I’ve wanted to go back to school to receive a degree of my own, and she knows the importance of how to keep up with positive writing skills and grammar also.
I know that my skills aren’t even close to being perfect, but I do know that I can and will succeed in my future ventures. The times that I have had growing up essentially alone having to basically raise myself were challenging and at times very non satisfying. I did although make the best of every situation knowing that I could do better the next time as long as life allowed me that next time. We all have taken advantage of particular times in our lives to just say “ I will get to