u/IdrewApictureOf

I never thought that I would be returning to college at 31. I always thought that I would have completed college by the time I was 22, like most of my peers, and then I would have gone on to medical school. By now I thought I was going to be at the beginning of a fulfilling career as a medical doctor. I never thought that I would be forced to drop out after getting sick. I definitely didn’t think I would be changing my career goals. But here I am, and both of those ring true.

 

When I was 19, I started a long journey with what we now know is sarcoidosis. It wasn’t easy to diagnose because I took an atypical presentation. My lungs, at first, were spared. But my immune system wasn’t. My spleen had become massively enlarged, and by the time it became obvious that no course of medicine was going to shrink it back to its normal state, it had grown to the size of a baby according to the surgeon who removed it. After it was removed, the disease began to focus on my lungs with the same quickness and veracity it attacked my spleen. The change was sudden, almost an overnight change. All Of a sudden, I was placed on supplemental oxygen. I was 27.

 

Following the same course it took with my spleen, it refused to be cowed by traditional first line treatment, prednisone, or the second line of treatment, methotrexate. Not even a fourth line treatment called acthar gel was able to stop the progression and I was referred to transplant for a double lung transplant. At the same time that I was referred to transplant, I chose to seek a second opinion in hopes of avoiding the need for transplant altogether. This second opinion saved my life. Not only did this doctor stop the progression, she reversed some of the disease itself, and my lung function improved by 6% and I was able to leave the transplant team, no longer in need of a transplant. The disease did leave me disabled, a portion of my lungs are scarred from the chronic inflammation from my disease, but I intend on proving my doctor wrong when she says I will not be coming off of oxygen. After all, with the 6% lung function improvement came a decrease in my oxygen needs from 4 lpm to 3 lpm.

 

I have also decided that I will no longer be living my life on pause because of my disease. With that decision also came the decision to change my major. Through the whole illness saga, I remained employed part time as a cashier at Dairy Queen. This, along with my hobby of reading, led me to decide I want to major in business, with a focus on finance. My hopes are to graduate from Ivy Tech with a degree in business administration to transfer over to the IU Kelley School of Business or Purdue Global for my bachelor’s degree. Ultimately, I would like to go on to receive an MBA, with my career goals to start as an accountant, to assistant controller, to controller, to hopefully CFO. At 31, that feels like a massive undertaking, but they say “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

~~~~is this essay worthy of sending? I wasn't given a prompt, I was just told to consider answering questions like what my career goals are, if I have any special circumstances, why I chose my major. 600 words is the limit

My account is in the negatives, life is too expensive. I made the poor decision to get a klarna account to get groceries. I haven't used it this week because I know I can't even afford 5 dollars. Didn't think I'd need to lock my account. Someone managed to hack? my account and placed 2 orders this morning. One for 60 from Walmart, one for 40 from doordash. Sending my bank account further into the negatives. I flagged them, but they still charged the first payments. I'm going to be charged multiple overdraft fees which will make paying the next set of bills impossible. Ive already cut out things like groceries and am surviving on food from work. I don't purchase anything that I don't need, and still, im failing spectacularly