Overcoming Obstacles

Kellen - Holton, Kansas
Entered on March 2, 2009
Age Group: Under 18
Themes: setbacks

I believe that overcoming obstacles when you are young will help you down the road. When you overcome an obstacle you have a feeling of accomplishment and power.

When I was just a baby I was diagnosed with Pierre Robin Sequence. Pierre Robin Sequence is characterized by a small jaw, posterior displacement or retraction of the tongue, and upper airway obstruction. Incomplete closure of the roof of the mouth, is present in the majority of patients, and is commonly U-shaped. You would never know anything was wrong with me by just looking at me because none of it is visible on the outside. I don’t remember anything that happened to me since I was just a baby but my parents have told me just about everything that did happen to me. My mom wrote in her diary everyday that she was in the hospital with me. The day I read the diary I had tears in my eyes because I couldn’t believe that this actually happened to me.

I was in the hospital for months, according to my mom’s diary. She said that whenever the doctors in blue uniforms came in I would start crying because I somehow knew that the doctors were here to give me shots. In one page of the diary my mom was crying because the doctors had said that they didn’t know if I was going to live and that it could only be a matter of time before I could die. My parents would not believe them. How could you believe your son is going to die if you are a parent? I think that it was my parent’s love for me that kept me alive.

Today my parents call me the “Million Dollar Baby” because it cost them a lot of money for all of my expensive procedures. Now I am a normal teenage boy living a normal life. I still have a smaller jaw compared to other people and doctors say I will always be a little bit shorter than the rest of my classmates. I am okay with all this because in God’s eyes we are all the same. I overcame a very rough time in my life but now that I have overcome it I feel a sense of power and accomplishment.