My College Essay

I wrote my college essay on how Celiac Disease has changed who I am and how it has shaped me. So, here it is! Hope you enjoy it.

A New View of Life

When I got the diagnosis, all I heard was the word “disease.” All I could think was I have a disease. A disease is incurable and would impact my life perpetually. I should have been relieved to find out what was wrong; I had been bouncing between specialists and doctors for four months with no results. After a month of pain and tears, I was praying that something was wrong with me, so that we would be able to get rid of it. But when I found out what I had was a disease, the tears flowed freely without caring who was around. I remember my mom holding me close and reminding me that she’s there for me.

Sitting behind a computer, the gastroenterologist assured me in her detached, professional manner that I’d be “just fine.” She is a doctor who specializes in the digestive system and found out from a simple blood test that I have Celiac disease, which is a type of gluten intolerance. Handing me a stack of informational pamphlets, she told me the only thing I’d have to do to “cure” it was change my diet. Right after finding out what Celiac disease was, I searched page after page on the Internet about it. I stared at the screen of my laptop until my eyes hurt reading and re-reading the misleading information. I was led to believe just having the disease could cause further health problems. Luckily after talking to others who have a similar condition, I found that I wouldn’t die from having a food allergy.

Discovering I have this allergy has changed a lot about me and my outlook on life. At first, it was about trying new foods, such as brown rice pasta. When it was lifted from the pot it cooked in, it all clumped together like the roots of a plant. There was a difference in taste, too. I knew right off it’d take time to get used to. After a while of strange tasting pastas, cookies, and breads, I noticed that the food I eat wasn’t the only thing I had been changing.

I started trying new activities that I normally wouldn’t do and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Staring down at my gummy bear sized peers from thirty feet in the air at a ropes course, I started on a pathway of overcoming my fear of heights. I tried kayaking in a single boat for the first time and managed to not tip over. Through two hospital visits, seven different tests, and four months of annoyance towards doctors, I realized that I can overcome something as simple as a fear or as complex as learning patience. It might seem silly to anyone else, but to me, at such a young age, this meant everything. Changing one little thing in my daily life taught me to take risks, whether they be big or small.