Jeremiah Portillo
Ms. Knight
English IV
August 29, 2014
Overcoming Cancer I was supposed to be in school but instead I was sitting on a hospital bed with a needle stuck in my arm. The doctors diagnosed me with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and told me I was high risk which meant that I had 50% of living. I was only a nine year old boy trying to finish the 5th grade but sometimes bad things happen to good people. After that day it was hard for me. I struggled emotionally when my hair fell off and had to deal with being sick all the time. When I got to high school, I struggled hard with my grades. Honestly I did not believe that I could succeed in life. But when the pastor of my church encouraged me to not give up, I realized that this difficult situation I was going through was for me to learn that one should never give up no matter what circumstance. It is now my senior year and I am trying hard to do well academic wise. This experience taught me to appreciate how well the hospital and its staff treated me. I appreciate how the engineering in the equipment saved my life. Now I want to be a biomedical engineer so that I can help in building and repairing hospital equipment so that other people going through the same situation can be helped as well. I thank God for giving me the opportunity of living and I want to serve others in gratitude. I now serve in my church helping in Sunday school and playing guitar in the church band. I improved greatly in my grades and now I am