Admissions Essay - My Father Died of AIDS :: Medicine College Admissions Essays

Admissions Essay -My Father Died of AIDS Seventeen years ago, I came bounding into a creative activity of love and laughter. I was the front child, the first grandchild, the first niece, and the primary focus of my entire extended family. Although they were not married, my parents were young and spirited and had every good intention for their new baby girl. I grew up with opportunities for creative thinkerual and spiritual growth, secure in the knowledge that I was loved, vindicate from fear, and confident that my world was close to perfect. And I was the center of a world that had meaning only in terms of its effect on me-- what I could see from a height of three feet and what I could comprehend with the intellect and emotions of a child. This state of innocence persisted through my early teens, but changed dramatically in the spring of my sophomore year of high school. My beloved contract was dying of AIDS. From the moment my parents told me, I confronted emotions and issu es that many adults have never faced. finish of a parent, and AIDS specifically, forced my view of the world and my sense of righteousness to take a dramatic turn. I had already accepted my fathers quirk and had watched through the years as he experienced both hurt and acceptance related to his sexual preference. However, in this case I did not have the benefit of time to understand my fathers illness since he dogged not to tell me until he had developed full-blown AIDS. My role in the relationship was suddenly reversed. Where I had once been the only child of my case-by-case father, I was now the parent to the debilitated child. By the summer of my lower-ranking year, I had rearranged the structure of my life as my fathers illness progressed and he became increasingly incapacitated, he depended on me a great deal. Each morning beforehand school I took him to the hospital where he received blood transfusions or chemotherapy to treat the lymphoma that was destroying hi s body. After school, I raced home to complete my homework so that I could later go to his apartment. There I cooked meals, cleaned up, and administered his oral and endovenous medications. Working with IVs became second nature to me. I found myself familiar with the name calling of drugs like Cytovene, used to treat CMV, Neupogen, to raise ones white blood electric cell count, and literally countless others.