English 120
The Things That Can Happen
My name is Bryan Smith and my story begins back in the year 2007 when I joined the military during my junior year of high school. Since then life hasn’t been the same. First off you need to know growing up for me was never easy. My mother never believed that medically there could be anything wrong with me and if there was, I must have made it up. Anyway, on one miserable day in late 2009, things changed in a devastating way when I was diagnosed with what’s called Scheuermann’s kyphosis disease. This disease is a degenerative spinal disease that just wears and wears at the disks and vertebra in the spine until nothing is left. Along with that it cause kyphosis, or a severe curvature.
So going back to when I joined the military, I was screened just like everyone else for things such as scoliosis and other issues. At this point in time nothing was detected and I was able to join. When I was at basic training I noticed that the body armor was taking a toll on my body but didn’t think much of it. I returned home from training and went back to life as normal. For the next year I had a few aches and pains but nothing I thought I couldn’t handle. After graduating high school, I was sent to complete my training for my specific job in the National Guard. Again, during the course of my training I noticed that my body was handling less and less time wearing the armor, but I just shrugged it off and pushed through it like we were taught to do.
I completed my training and came home once again to be assigned to my permanent duty station. When I got there we were informed that we would be deploying. Luckily for me if turned out to be a state side deployment to Washington DC. So we started training and once again the body armor was becoming too much for me to handle. This time was different however. I was in agony by the time I came out of the armor and this time I decided enough was