My Family With Autism (ADHD)

In my family, I have a brother that has autism with ADHD that can’t communicate with us, a dad and an aunt that have to go to dialysis three times a week, a mom that has had several surgeries in the past for having stomach cysts, several other aunts and uncles that have Type 2 diabetes, and a grandmother I was really close with who died from lung cancer. These events have forced me to grow up faster than I needed to. It may be a cliché, but for me it’s my life because every day I’ve had to make decisions that either made me mature ten years or take me back ten years in my juvenescence. My brother has not always been the way he is. He was once normal, until the doctors found a strawberry hemangioma on his shoulder that could have potentially
killed him. Devastated from hearing this news, my parents thought the only way to deal with this was to fight it. At times, they doubted their decision, but when my brother made a full recovery they knew they had made the right decision. It wasn’t until years after they found out the consequences. Constantly, he hits everything in his path and has severe tantrums. I have to choose daily if I should pick a battle with him or help my parents calm him down. Most of the time I try I help my parents, but when I do pick to fight with him, I feel ashamed of myself. I could have just calmed him down, but I made it worse. I should have just helped my parents out and not fight. Even my grandmother, didn’t have cancer for all of her life. She was a caring old lady who would take care of everyone, even if she had cancer or not. She had fought it for a very long time. Even longer than the doctors thought she would. Every single day, she was in pain from the chemo and the radiation, and every single day I was there to help her to get from her bedroom to the kitchen. It wasn’t until she forgot who I was that I knew that she was almost gone. I knew she was transitioning from being alive to being close to death. Even though it may seem that I haven’t matured from helping my brother or grandma, I’ve learned something different. I’ve learned that I love taking care of people, and to make sure that people are taken care of to the best of my ability. Being able to attend Camp CHLA will let me gain more knowledge about things in the medical field that could later help me take care of people with certain kinds of illnesses such as my brother and grandmother.