Going through challenging times while growing up can change your whole life. These times can make you stronger or break you down. My test in life of whether I was going to come out stronger or fall apart was when I was in 8th grade. I was on a memorable school trip to D.C. I didn’t know this then, but this trip was just the beginning of the long road.

A month later in April, I began to start getting the symptoms back, and they lasted for about a week. I went to the doctors and she didn’t think anything was wrong with me, and I had faith in her opinion. Thinking I just had a virus and that I’d be okay, so I moved on.

But then on the very last day of school, it all began to come back; and I’ve had it ever since. A few days after hanging out with my friends, I went to the emergency room to see what was going on, because the symptoms wouldn’t go away. I am a 15 year old girl who loves being with her friends and having a good time more than anything, and being surrounded by people I loved was always one of my favorite things to do. Deep down, I knew that I was sick and needed to find out what was wrong with me, and having that feeling is one of the worst things you can feel. Being nervous to hangout with friends because you don’t know if you will feel sick is not something a girl at 15 should have to worry about. Eventually, once I didn’t start to feel better and the medicine from my pediatrician didn’t work, we went to see a specialist at the Boston Children’s Hospital.

I knew this was a step into the right direction to feeling better; however, I was afraid that they would find something extremely wrong with me. Always having that thought that something really wrong could be happening in my body is hard to handle all the time. My doctor decided that I should start with some procedures to look further into how I was feeling, and I knew that I had to get through with these procedures to start feeling better. With having the procedures, they found some things in my stomach that they thought were ulcers. However, the symptoms would not go away, and my doctor was thinking that there could possibly be something wrong that I may have for the rest of my life.

This news I got from her was hard to hear and I knew my life may never be the same as it was before the trip to D.C. I was heartbroken, shocked, and overwhelmed with everything I just heard from her. Thinking that now it was actually becoming a reality, that my life really may be changing; was overwhelming to comprehend. But after a more thorough procedure, she wasn’t sure if it was really what she thought it was.

Throughout this whole period of time, I have chosen to try my best to get through the days of difficulty and I decided it is better to stay strong so it could help me in the long run. I once heard someone say “sometimes at your weaker points in life, you find your strength” and I didn’t understand what they meant when they said that, but now this quote has a whole new meaning to me. If I can stay strong through whatever I’m going through, then I will come out stronger mentally.