essay

hey everyone HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! :D i hope you all had a good night yesterday and have good resolutions and everything. i pulled an all-nighter last night and i'm starting to get tired but it doesn't matter because i'm not doing anything today. and the hives well, they're just starting so they're not super bad but i'm going to take claritins and zyrtecs and stuff and hopefully it'll be okay. =) but anyway that's not why i'm posting, i'm posting because i started and finished my admissions essay for the school i'm applying to and i wanted to post it because all of you always gave good feedback and stuff. and hello, "coolessayists"!! hehe. so the topics you could choose from were:

1. choose 3 people from history or popular literature that you would like to room with / have classes with here at andover and tell why
2. tell us about the most interesting thing you have learned in the past year
3. tell us a true story about someone close to you that you admire and tell us why you admire them

i had a hard time thinking of anything with any of the topics but yesterday of course i got hives everywhere and funnily enough that was what inspired me (topic 2 btw). :P so i'm so happy i got it over with because the hard part of the writing section is over now. :D well anyway, if any of you have time to read it please do and tell me everything you didn't like or suggestions or whatever. it would reeeeally help me, thank you!!!

Hives

The most interesting thing I have learned in the past year

Geena Chen

Today is December 31, the last day of year 2006, and I woke up with my right eye swollen shut and my body covered head to toe in angry red hives. Since this is not the first time that I have randomly woken up this way, my parents did not feel the need, like the last two times, to bring me to the emergency room. This has happened twice before, and I know now from the past two experiences that it is just a random outbreak of viral hives, and not an extreme allergic condition like everyone had thought before. That did not make me any less upset though. I had been looking forward to today for the past two weeks now. I was going to have a sleepover with my two friends, sure that we would have an amazing time doing crazy things and laughing and reflecting on the past year. But, this morning as I desperately tried prying my right eye open with my fingers and applied anti-itch cream to the largest hives on my body, I wondered whether it would still be appropriate to go out looking like I could go into anaphylactic shock at any moment. As I worried about what I would try to do about this however, I stopped myself. Of course I knew what I would do, it didn’t make sense worrying. I thought about the first time this had happened to me, just a year ago. That time had been reasonably traumatic, but I had learned probably the most winning and important lesson of this year in the end.

The first time I had a severe eruption of hives was last year, as Christmas break was coming to a close. It started out gradually, where at first I decided I had nothing to worry about and thought they’d go away in a day. However, when school started everything got much worse. When I woke up both my eyes would be swollen half shut, and scary, big red bumps were placed in unpredictable spots on my face, making me look like an overgrown chicken pox victim. I refused to go to school the first day it happened, and my mom took me to the doctor. Surprisingly, by the time we got to the hospital my face did not look half as scary as it did just a few minutes before. The doctor did not think it was very severe, so he just recommended for me to be careful about what I ate and told me to drink some liquid Benadryl.

I figured it would be okay, so I took Benadryl in the recommended doses. The Benadryl calmed the hives for only a day though. For the next week I begged my mom to take me to the doctor’s again. She set up an appointment, but while I was waiting for the appointment date to come I had to go to school. Every day I would wake up forty-five minutes earlier than I usually had to and try all kinds of hives treatments that I either looked up on the internet or made up by myself. I took oatmeal baths, did hot and cold compresses on the eyes, bought soothing lotions, and even tried just pinching my eyelids together violently to reduce the swelling when I got too frustrated. My treatments rarely did any good, and eventually I would always just have to catch the bus to go to school, feeling so self-conscious that I would’ve liked to rip my face off and then bury myself.

School was always awkward and awful for me during that period. The people who didn’t know me had no problem openly pointing at me and whispering to their friends in the hallways, and the people who kind of knew me clearly felt too embarrassed to ask me straight-out what was wrong. Then again, my teachers would always immediately demand quite rudely, “What the heck happened to your face!!” I did not like any of the above reactions, and I absolutely hated going to school, but I went anyway. During this time I had never appreciated my friends more, who always stood by me and walked me places so that it wouldn’t look as if everyone thought I was too scary and contagious to be around.

At my next visit to the doctor’s, the doctor saw my face in one of its worst conditions. He put me on a small dose of a steroid drug called Prednisone. The Prednisone worked extremely well, and my face was totally free of blemishes for two days. Unfortunately, once I had run out of the medicine I was back to the same original condition. Determinedly, my parents scheduled an appointment with both my pediatrician and my allergist. They also made me go to bed at or before 8:00 every night. At that point I was getting used to looking so malformed. Before I would get very discouraged when people would treat me differently because of my face, but then I realized it was silly getting worked up about it.

The hives on my body were my problem, and there was nothing I could do to make them go away. Although the whole situation was terrible for me, I knew that worse things could’ve happened. I thought of the things that were truly important to me, and I started feeling better about everything. My friends still cared about me and did not put so much weight into how I looked, my family was trying to help me, and in the end I could just look at coming to school as the ultimate test for my self-esteem.

After this insight, I came to school much happier and more carefree. With a newfound perspective, I figured that it would be silly for the strange looks, whispers, and pointing directed towards me by people I barely knew to bother me. Why should I care in the least whether or not a total stranger thinks I look good? The stranger is just that, a stranger. Someone who has no real significance in my life. Then, I remembered one of my favorite quotes in the world since I was very little:

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind,” – Dr. Seuss.

Remembering these words of wisdom, I took into account that anyone who would be so quick to judge me probably wasn’t someone that I would be interested in getting to know anyway. It took another four weeks and another three useless doctors, but finally when I saw a real allergist, I got prescribed a much longer and stronger dosage of Prednisone. This time, the hives were gone for good. And because of this incident that happened one year ago, it really sunk in for me that I should always be myself, and the people that I really genuinely cared about would probably always accept me.

That is why I decided this morning, that despite my hideous looks, I would still go to the sleepover. I feel good, and I will be with my good friends. And really, it would be a shame if I had to pass the New Year alone and asleep by 8:00.

ps; for the most part things are true but i did exaggerate a bunch and i lied about when this happened (it was actually more than a year ago but who cares). is that a problem? like, does it sound like i'm trying to make myself out as someone who has a severe disease? i was thinking about that and i don't know, i wouldn't want that. eh whatever i'm nervous

talk to you all later!!! and thanks!! and happy new year!!! love,
geena