My mom is the youngest of twelve, and my dad is the middle child of five, so I had a lot of aunts and uncles growing up. Within our Romanian culture, you’re very close to your family, so growing up, as sad as it is, I just remember my family being in and out of the hospital all the time. Some of my family had been affected by the radiation from Chernobyl, so several of them had malignant complications from that. My grandpa fought in World War ll, and had bullets left in his legs after standing in front of a firing squad. Although he lived a long, prosperous life, he developed refractory cellulitis in his older years from the bullets, eventually becoming septic and passing away. My dad was also involved in a hit and run accident, and almost got paralyzed from the neck down. Fortunately, he’s thriving now as he’s an Arizona Tennis Champion. I, myself, was hospitalized towards the end of my sophomore year in high school. I recall going to school with some nausea and bad abdominal pain, which prompted me to go to the nurse’s office. Based on my history alone, she said she thought I had appendicitis. To confirm her suspicion, I subsequently went to my doctor, who attributed the symptoms to simple gastroenteritis. However, the pain escalated so quickly that I went to the ER, and yet again, the doctors there still didn’t think it was appendicitis. After some insistence, it was determined that I actually did have appendicitis, and I was subsequently hospitalized. The next day, my appendix ruptured unfortunately, and I ended up developing peritonitis from it. Apparently, at one point, the doctors had told my parents to prepare for the worst. For my parents, this was a horrifying experience. I don’t remember much of it because I was asleep most of the time, but for a long time thereafter, I felt like I was just brushed off to the side. After that, I vowed that I would do my best to make people feel heard, and not let others have the kind of experience that I did.